Abstract CT223: The building of a cancer vaccine trial platform: The NHS England Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad (CVLP)

Abstract

Background: The CVLP has been established to address the process for generating personalized vaccines at scale, by recruiting suitable patients and supporting accelerated tumor tissue processing. The CVLP is a collaborative project including NHS England, Genomics England, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) which is being delivered by the Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trials Unit. The CVLP has been designed as a company and trial agnostic program so it can be flexible to the needs of multiple cancer vaccine trials in multiple cancer types. Methods: The CVLP aims to rapidly identify large numbers of cancer patients who could be eligible for trials to expedite evidence for the efficacy of vaccines across multiple types of cancer. To support the identification of participants their tissue samples are processed by a standardised, high quality, expanded pathway, incorporating elements of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service. The primary objective of the CVLP is to determine whether it is feasible to recruit cancer patients to a platform for personalised cancer vaccine trials, whether there is capacity for tumor samples to be analysed within a suitable time frame and if this results in acceptable participation in cancer vaccine clinical trials. Sponsored by NHS England the first trial incorporated within the CVLP is BioNTech BNT122-01 (NCT04486378) investigating the RO7198457 mRNA vaccine in patients with ctDNA-positive, resected Stage II/III colorectal cancer. Results: Between Sep 2023 and Dec 2024, 435 patients have consented to participate in the CVLP from 55 English sites, 96.4% of tissue samples were prepared in the required time frame for testing (average 2.5 days), of which 342 patients proceeded to referral to BNT122-01. We now estimate that approximately 60% of patients across England undergoing colorectal surgery have access to the trial through the CVLP resulting in the UK screening more than 3x the global average for BNT122-01 trial. The CVLP patient pathway from patient identification to entry into available clinical trials has been developed during the feasibility stage which now includes following the steps; i) patients identified by the clinical team managing their care and consented into CVLP; ii) blood and tissue samples (during surgery) collected; iii) samples sent to Cellular Pathology Genomic Centre and Genomic Laboratory Labs to carry out genomic sequencing; iv) sequencing data stored as part of NHS standard of care and the clinical liaison team pairs patients with available research trials. The CVLP has now progressed to onboarding further cancer vaccine trials in other cancer indications. Conclusions: CVLP has met its first feasibility endpoint of recruiting 300 patients and has progressed to onboarding further cancer vaccine trials. Citation Format: Gareth Griffiths, Victoria Goss, Nicole Keyworth, Daniel Muller, Sam Wilding, Simon Crabb, Emily Shaw, Nicola Chapman-Hart, Max Shen, Patrick Ezeani, Gillian Rosenberg, Peter Johnson. The building of a cancer vaccine trial platform: The NHS England Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad (CVLP) [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2025; Part 2 (Late-Breaking, Clinical Trial, and Invited s); 2025 Apr 25-30; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2025;85(8_Suppl_2): nr CT223.