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UCLA HEALTH: Samara Rahman, 74, considers herself lucky. She gets to take walks on the beach, go swimming and ride her bike — all things that were taken from her when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November of 2022. Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is one of the most difficult cancers to treat since it’s often diagnosed at advanced stages and can spread quickly to other parts of the body.

ONCOLIFE (pages 32-33): Elicio's innovative approach involves coupling this therapy with AMP immunotherapy, which is strategically delivered to lymph nodes - the command centers of the immune system. This combination has shown remarkable success in not only eradicating established murine solid tumors that were resistant to TCR-T cell monotherapy but also in providing long-term protection against tumor recurrence.

MIT NEWS: Therapeutic cancer vaccines are an appealing strategy for treating malignancies. In theory, when a patient is injected with peptide antigens — protein fragments from mutant proteins only expressed by tumor cells — T cells learn to recognize and attack cancer cells expressing the corresponding protein. By teaching the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells, these vaccines ideally would not only eliminate tumors but prevent them from recurring.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Pancreatic cancer is among the deadliest types of cancer, but a new experimental therapeutic vaccine appears promising for people with the most common form of the disease.

CMO360: As CEO of four biotech companies, Robert Connelly, CEO of Elicio Therapeutics has plenty of experience working with CMOs and discusses what he looks for in a CMO and how CMOs can prepare to lead emerging biotech companies.

MSK: A new vaccine shows encouraging early results as a potential off-the-shelf treatment for certain patients with pancreatic or colorectal cancer, according to a study co-led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). The vaccine targets tumors with mutations (or changes) in the KRAS gene, a driving force in many cancers.

CURE® Magazine: A vaccine for the postsurgical treatment of KRAS-mutated pancreatic and colorectal cancers, ELI-002, is showing promising early study results — but any potential broad commercial availability of the drug is likely several years away, as one researcher tells CURE®.

FIERCE BIOTECH: As Elicio Therapeutics awaits a phase 2 readout of its lymph node-targeting therapeutic cancer vaccine in humans, the biotech has published fresh preclinical data showing the same tech boosted the efficacy of T cell receptor-modified T-cell (TCR-T) therapy in mice.

Dylan J. Drakes, Abdulraouf M. Abbas, et al.
Cancer Immunology Research (An AACR Journal)
January 25, 2024

ACIR: Colorectal cancer (CRC) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have a low survival rate, low infiltration of tumor-specific tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), infrequent neoantigen mutations, and checkpoint inhibitors are largely ineffective in PDAC and subtypes of CRC. Common mutations in the oncogenes driver KRAS (mKRAS) however can serve as immunotherapy targets.