Personalized Cancer Vaccines: The Science Is Ready. Is the Manufacturing?

By Kate E. Broderick, PhD

Personalized neoantigen vaccines now have late-stage randomized data in resected melanoma and five-year follow-up from an mRNA program. Early trials in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma show patients alive at five and six years. Kate E. Broderick, Ph.D., argues the clinical case is outpacing manufacturing, and that the gap is underestimated.

The pressure point is a four-to-six-week window from biopsy to dosing that cannot be negotiated. Her view: plasmid fermentation can consume most of that window, mRNA has the clearest near-term path, and LNP delivery is harder inside tumors than in systemic use. She also questions whether centralized production can ever serve thousands of patients at once.

Read her argument for what manufacturing must solve first.