The University of Oxford announced in October 2024 that scientists working on ‘OvarianVax’ a vaccine to encourage the immune system to “recognise and attack” the earliest stages of ovarian cancer, have secured funding from Cancer Research UK. The team will receive up to £600,000 over the next three years to support research from establishing targets to possible clinical trials. Although getting a vaccine to the point where it is “widely available to women at risk of ovarian cancer” is “many years” away, the funding is an “exciting step” towards preventing ovarian cancer at an early stage, rather than treating it after it has taken hold.
Ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is the 6th most common cancer in women, causing around 7,500 new cases every year in the UK. There is currently no screening programme for the disease, and some women with are at higher risk with inherited copies of altered genes. Compared to women without gene alterations, women with altered BRCA1 genes face a higher risk by up to 65%, and women with altered BRCA2 genes face a higher risk by up to 35%.
Women with these alterations are recommended to have their ovaries removed by the age of 35, which has implications for having children and brings on early menopause. Many cases of ovarian cancer are only identified at a late stage. Professor Ahmed Ahmed is the Director of the Ovarian Cancer Cell Laboratory, MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford, and lead for the OvarianVax project and comments that “we need better strategies to prevent ovarian cancer”.
“Currently women with BRCA1/2 mutations, who are at very high risk, are offered surgery which prevents cancer but robs them of the chance to have children afterwards.”
However, a possible “solution” could be on the horizon with the OvarianVax project, focussed on women at high risk but with potential to expand if trials are successful.
“Thanks to this funding, our research can take a big step forward towards a viable vaccine for ovarian cancer.”
Vaccine development
The researchers will identify the proteins on the surface of early-stage ovarian cancer cells that are most strongly recognised by the immune system and work out how effectively the vaccine kills organoids, “mini-models” of ovarian cancer. If this proves successful, they will move forward to clinical trials in the hope that one day women could be offered the vaccine to prevent ovarian cancer.
“Teaching the immune system to recognise the very early signs of cancer is a tough challenge. But we now have highly sophisticated tools which give us real insights into how the immune system recognises ovarian cancer.”
Professor Ahmed’s team has already found that immune cells from patients with ovarian cancer can “remember” the tumour. They will use this discovery to train the immune system to recognise over 100 proteins on the surface of ovarian cancer, known as tumour-associated antigens. The research will uncover which antigens trigger the immune system to recognise and kills cells that are becoming ovarian cancer, using tissue samples from the ovaries and fallopian tubes of people with ovarian cancer to recreate the early stages of disease.
The team will also work with patient and public representatives to understand who would be willing to take the vaccine, who would receive the most benefit from it, how it could be administered, and how to ensure it is taken up by as many eligible women as possible if it is successful in clinical trials.
Prevention research strategy
This is one of several projects that Cancer Research UK is funding within its prevention research strategy, which seeks to use discoveries from the lab to find more precise ways to prevent cancer. Cancer Research UK’s Chief Executive, Michelle Mitchell, described these projects as “a really important step forward into an exciting future, where cancer is much more preventable”. The funding should “power crucial discoveries” that can be used to “realise our ambitions to improve ovarian cancer survival”.
“OvarianVax builds on the exciting developments in vaccine technology during the pandemic. This is one of the many projects which we hope will give women longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”
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