Cancer Vaccines Are the N.I.H.’s Next ‘Big Bet’

A new type of cancer treatment — vaccines — is so promising that it demands a national effort to expedite discoveries, said the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Anthony Letai.

The big bet is a planned public-private partnership involving the N.I.H, the nonprofit Foundation for the N.I.H., researchers, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, advocacy groups, philanthropies and patients, all working together to develop and test the vaccines.

The vaccines are treatments that are unique to each patient by prompting the immune system to attack a patient’s specific cancer. The injections teach the immune system’s T cells to home in on aberrant proteins found on a patient’s tumor and nowhere else.

“This is a completely new frontier,” said Karen Knudsen, the chief executive officer of the Parker Institute. The institute has two representatives working with the N.I.H. initiative and is also funding vaccine studies, positioning them as one of its main priorities.

Initial results from studies of vaccines for melanoma, pancreatic cancer, renal cell cancer and even glioblastoma — the brain cancer that has so far resisted all forms of treatment — are “incredibly encouraging,” Dr. Knudsen said.

The New York Times - Oct. 9, 2026 - By Gina Kolata