癌症疫苗是美國國立衛生研究院的下一個「重大押注」（1/2）

Recently The New York Times reported the following:

Cancer Vaccines Are the N.I.H.’s Next ‘Big Bet’ (1/2)

New details have emerged about an initiative that starts in December to fast-track the vaccines, similar to the successful push for the Covid-19 vaccine.

The NYT - By Gina Kolata

Oct. 9, 2026

A new type of cancer treatment — vaccines — is so promising that it demands a national effort to expedite discoveries, said the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Anthony Letai.

“We can do things that would not otherwise be done,” he said of new resources being made available at the National Institutes of Health. “We can place big bets on new ideas.”

The big bet is a planned public-private partnership involving the N.I.H, the nonprofit Foundation for the N.I.H., researchers, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, advocacy groups, philanthropies and patients, all working together to develop and test the vaccines.

The vaccines are treatments that are unique to each patient by prompting the immune system to attack a patient’s specific cancer. The injections teach the immune system’s T cells to home in on aberrant proteins found on a patient’s tumor and nowhere else.

“We hope this will be like Covid vaccines,” said Stacey Adam, a senior clinical officer at the Foundation for the N.I.H., referring to the public-private partnership that led to the rapid development of vaccines for the coronavirus.

She said the vaccine program was expected to begin in December, starting with a focus on pancreatic cancer, liver cancer and colorectal cancer, as well as a subset of pediatric tumors.

An unpublished white paper report, which was shared exclusively with The New York Times, explains the vaccine initiative and states that what is now possible with vaccines was “largely theoretical a decade ago.”

The project is still a bet: There is no guarantee that the early promise of cancer vaccines will pay off. The history of medicine is littered with tales of treatments that seemed incredible in early studies only to fail in larger tests.

Yet enthusiasm for the vaccines is running high.

“This is a completely new frontier,” said Karen Knudsen, the chief executive officer of the Parker Institute. The institute has two representatives working with the N.I.H. initiative and is also funding vaccine studies, positioning them as one of its main priorities.

Initial results from studies of vaccines for melanoma, pancreatic cancer, renal cell cancer and even glioblastoma — the brain cancer that has so far resisted all forms of treatment — are “incredibly encouraging,” Dr. Knudsen said.

Cancer vaccines are different from the Covid-19 vaccines or vaccines for other diseases like the measles or flu. Those vaccines prevent disease. Cancer vaccines, however, attack a cancer that is already present.

But they are similar to the Covid vaccine because most use mRNA technology, which had fallen out of favor with the Trump administration.

So far, just one vaccine study has been large enough to show definitive results. It involved 1,137 people with advanced melanoma.

Merck and Moderna, which conducted the study, reported in August that the vaccine increased the time before cancers recurred and increased the time before they spread. The companies plan to reveal the full data set later this month.

Dr. Adam was optimistic: “The science is there, the technologies are there,” she said.

“Everything is coming to a head,” she added. “Now is the time to jump start.”

(to be continued)

Translation

癌症疫苗是美國國立衛生研究院的下一個「重大押注」（1/2）

一項旨在加速癌症疫苗研發的計劃將於12月啟動，其模式與成功推動新冠疫苗研發的模式類似。該計劃的最新細節已經浮現

美國國家癌症研究所所長 Anthony Letai 博士表示，一種新型癌症療法 - 疫苗 - 其前景如此光明，需要舉全國之力加快其研發進程。

他談到美國國立衛生研究院 (N.I.H) 正有新資源可用時說：“我們可以做一些以前做不到的事情。我們可以對新理念進行重大押注。

這項重大押注是一項計劃中的公私合作項目，參與者包括美國國立衛生研究院、非營利組織美國國立衛生研究院基金會、研究人員、製藥和生物技術公司、倡導團體、慈善機構和患者，他們將共同致力於疫苗的研發和測試。

這些疫苗是針對每位患者度身定制的治療方案，旨在激發免疫系統攻擊患者特定的癌症。注射的疫苗能夠訓練免疫系統的T細胞，使其精準辨識並攻擊患者腫瘤上存在的異常蛋白，而不會攻擊其他的部位。

美國國立衛生研究院基金會高級臨床官員 Stacey Adam 說:「我們希望這能像新冠疫苗一樣成功」。她指的是促成新冠病毒疫苗快速研發的公私合作模式。

她表示，疫苗計劃預計12月啟動，初期將聚焦在胰臟癌、肝癌和大腸癌，以及部分兒童腫瘤。

一份尚未發表的白皮書報告（獨家提供給《紐約時報》）解釋了這項疫苗計劃，並指出，如今疫苗所能實現的，在「十年前還只是理論上的設想」。

該計劃仍是一個押注：癌症疫苗早期的預期能否最終實現尚無定論。醫學史上充斥著這樣的例子：有些療法在早期研究中看似難以置信，但在更大規模的試驗中卻以失敗告終。

然而，人們對疫苗的熱情卻異常高漲。

帕克研究所執行長 Karen Knudsen 說:「這是一個全新的領域」。該研究所派出兩名代表參與美國國立衛生研究院（NIH）的疫苗研發計劃，並資助疫苗研究，將其列為主要優先事項之一。

Dr. Knudsen 博士表示，針對黑色素瘤、胰腺癌、腎細胞癌，甚至膠質母細胞瘤（一種迄今為止對所有治療方法都無效的腦癌）的疫苗研究的初步結果「令人鼓舞」。

癌症疫苗與新冠疫苗或其他疾病（如麻疹或流感）的疫苗不同。後者的疫苗旨在預防疾病，而癌症疫苗則針對已存在的癌細胞進行攻擊。

但它們與新冠疫苗也有相似之處，因為大多數癌症疫苗都採用了 mRNA 技術，而這項技術曾一度被特朗普政府所摒棄。

迄今為止，只有一項疫苗研究的規模足夠大，能夠得出明確的結果。研究納入了1,137名晚期黑色素瘤患者。

進行這項研究的 Merck and Moderna 公司在8月報告稱，該疫苗拖慢了癌症復發和擴散的時間。兩家公司計劃在本月稍後公佈完整的數據集。

Adam 博士對此持樂觀態度- 她說: 「科學已經成熟，技術也已到位」。

她補充道: “一切都到了關鍵時刻”; “現在是行動的時候了。”

（待續）