New vaccine keeps advanced kidney cancer from recurring

Patients with advanced kidney cancer who received an experimental vaccine after their tumours were removed were still cancer-free years later in a small early-stage trial, researchers reported in Nature.

These were patients "where you know the risk of the cancer coming back is very high," said Dr. Toni Choueiri of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who helped lead the study. "And after a median follow up of almost four years, none of the nine vaccinated patients has experienced a recurrence from their kidney cancer."

Standard treatment for stage III or stage IV clear cell renal cell carcinoma is surgery followed by immunotherapy with Merck's Keytruda. In most patients, however, the cancer recurs, typically within three years, and there are no good treatments at that point.