Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) and Imperial College London (ICL) have announced that the first UK patients have received the experimental mRNA therapy in an ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trial to treat melanoma, lung cancer and other solid tumour cancers.

The patients received the treatment at the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Imperial Clinical Research facility at Hammersmith Hospital.

In the UK, around one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. While a range of therapies, including chemotherapy and immune therapies, have been successful, some cancer cells can become resistant to drugs, making tumours more challenging to treat.

Sponsored by Moderna and undertaken through the Moderna-UK strategic partnership, the global MOBILIZE trial is evaluating the safety and efficacy of an immunotherapy known as mRNA-4359, as well as its ability to recognise and fight cancer cells.

mRNA-4359 is a therapeutic cancer immunotherapy that is ready-made and tailored to a particular type of cancer.

The experimental immunotherapy works to present common markers of tumours to patients’ immune systems, training them to recognise and fight cancer cells that express them and potentially eliminate cells that could suppress the immune response.

The primary aim of the study is to assess whether the new mRNA therapy is safe and tolerated by patients, either when administered alone or in combination with an existing drug known as Keytruda (pembrolizumab), a type of immune checkpoint inhibitor developed by Merck & Co, known as MSD outside the US and Canada.

Researchers are also investigating whether the combination of treatments can shrink tumours in patients with certain types of lung and skin cancer and hope that the treatment could become a new option for difficult-to-treat cancers.

Dr David Pinato, ICL clinician scientist, said: “This trial is laying crucial groundwork that is moving us closer towards new therapies that are potentially less toxic and more precise.”

The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust is set to implement online adaptive radiation therapy (OART) with RaySearch’s treatment planning system, RayStation, and oncology information system, RayCare.

OART is a novel treatment for cancer patients that is increasingly emerging to assess patients’ anatomy, with a treatment plan adapted from an original reference plan with the patient on the treatment couch.

The Royal Marsden has been using RayStation for conventional treatment planning since 2016 and most recently acquired two additional Radixact treatment delivery machines from Accuray to be used for OART.

Daily-acquired patient images are used by OART to optimise treatment plans by considering the changes in the patients’ anatomy.

OART puts high demand on the acquired images and an efficient information flow between the treatment planning system, the oncology information system and the treatment control system.

RaySearch and Accuray’s ARTemis aim to provide online adaptive solutions for clinicians who use RayStation’s treatment planning system with the Radixact treatment delivery system.

The Royal Marsden will utilise RaySearch’s workflow management tools and Accuray’s ClearRTTM imaging for online adaptive therapy by implementing the full ARTemis package, which has been funded by the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

Johan Löf, founder and chief executive officer of RaySearch, explained: “The tools have been available in RayStation for many years and RayCare has, from the beginning, been developed to facilitate the implementation of OART in clinical routine.”

The Trust aims to become the first centre in the world to regularly perform OART on patients treated on the Radixact System.

Professor Uwe Oelfke, head of the joint department of physics at the Royal Marsden, reflected: “The ARTemis platform will enable us to tailor treatment in real time for patients being treated on our two new Radixact machines allowing us to target disease more precisely and reduce damage to healthy tissue.”