A real-world observation of patients with glioblastoma treated with a personalized peptide vaccine
Pauline Latzer, Henning Zelba, Florian Battke, Annekathrin Reinhardt, Borong Shao, Oliver Bartsch, Armin Rabsteyn, Johannes Harter, Martin Schulze, Thomas Okech, Alexander Golf, Christina Kyzirakos-Feger, Simone Kayser, Natalia Pieper, Magdalena Feldhahn, Julian Wünsche, Christian Seitz, Dirk Hadaschik, Claus Garbe, Till‐Karsten Hauser, Christian la Fougère, Dirk Biskup, Dawn Brooke, David M. Parker, Uwe M. Martens, Gerald Illerhaus, Deborah T. Blumenthal, Ryan Merrell, Luisa Sánchez‐Lorenzo, Máté Hídvégi, Paula de Robles, Sied Kebir, William W. Li, Vincent W. Li, Matthew Williams, Alexandra Miller, Santosh Kesari, Michael Castro, Annick Desjardins, David M. Ashley, Henry S. Friedman, Patrick Y. Wen, Elisabeth C. Neil, Fábio M. Iwamoto, Bence Sipos, Karsten Geletneky, Lars Zender, Martin Glas, David A. Reardon, Saskia Biskup
Abstract
Current treatment outcome of patients with glioblastoma (GBM) remains poor. Following standard therapy, recurrence is universal with limited survival. Tumors from 173 GBM patients are analysed for somatic mutations to generate a personalized peptide vaccine targeting tumor-specific neoantigens. All patients were treated within the scope of an individual healing attempt. Among all vaccinated patients, including 70 treated prior to progression (primary) and 103 treated after progression (recurrent), the median overall survival from first diagnosis is 31.9 months (95% CI: 25.0–36.5). Adverse events are infrequent and are predominantly grade 1 or 2. A vaccine-induced immune response to at least one of the vaccinated peptides is detected in blood samples of 87 of 97 (90%) monitored patients. Vaccine-specific T-cell responses are durable in most patients. Significantly prolonged survival is observed for patients with multiple vaccine-induced T-cell responses (53 months) compared to those with no/low induced responses (27 months; P = 0.03). Altogether, our results highlight that the application of personalized neoantigen-targeting peptide vaccine is feasible and represents a promising potential treatment option for GBM patients. Despite new treatment options, prognosis for patients with glioblastoma (GBM) remains poor. Here the authors report the clinical course of patients with GBM treated with a personalized neoantigen-derived peptide vaccine treated within the scope of an individual healing attempt.