Lipopolyplex-formulated mRNA cancer vaccine elicits strong neoantigen-specific T cell responses and antitumor activity.

Abstract

mRNA neoantigen cancer vaccine inducing neoantigen-specific T cell responses holds great promise for cancer immunotherapy; however, its clinical translation remains challenging because of suboptimal neoantigen prediction accuracy and low delivery efficiency, which compromise the in vivo therapeutic efficacy. We present a lipopolyplex (LPP)-formulated mRNA cancer vaccine encoding tandem neoantigens as a cancer therapeutic regimen. The LPP-formulated mRNA vaccines elicited robust neoantigen-specific CD8⁺ T cell responses in three syngeneic murine tumor models (CT26, MC38, and B16F10) to suppress tumor growth. Prophylactic cancer vaccine treatment completely prevented tumor development, and long-lasting memory T cells protected mice from tumor cell rechallenge. Combining the vaccine with immune checkpoint inhibitor further boosted the antitumor activity. Of note, LPP-based personalized cancer vaccine was administered in two cancer patients and induced meaningful neoantigen-specific T cell and clinical responses. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the LPP-based mRNA vaccine can elicit strong antitumor immune responses, and the results support further clinical evaluation of the therapeutic mRNA cancer vaccine.