Ahmet Dirican, Professor of Medical Oncology at Medicana International İzmir Hospital, shared on X:
“A New Era for Cancer Vaccines? | ESMO 2026
At ESMO 2026 in Madrid, Dr. Sapna Patel highlighted important advances in personalized cancer vaccines.
The Phase III INTerpath-001 trial demonstrated promising results with a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine combined with pembrolizumab in patients with resected high-risk melanoma.
24-month recurrence-free survival:
- Vaccine + pembrolizumab: 82.2%
- Pembrolizumab alone: 70.0%
An important distinction: These vaccines are designed to treat cancer and reduce recurrence, not to prevent cancer from developing.
Although the results are encouraging, regulatory approval is still pending, and longer-term survival data and predictive biomarkers are needed.
The future of cancer treatment may lie not only in targeting tumors, but in targeting the unique neoantigens of each patient’s cancer.”
You can also read: ESMO 2026: The Key Pembrolizumab Trials to Know
