Source: news.sky.com Author: Thomas Moore, Science correspondent @SkyNewsThomas A personalised cancer vaccine made from individual patients' own DNA has produced "really hopeful" early results. The ground-breaking jab, created using technology perfected in the COVID pandemic, is being given to patients after they complete conventional treatment for head and neck cancers. Patients have a high chance of the cancer returning. Preliminary data from a clinical trial being run at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre show that none of the first eight patients given the jab have relapsed, even after several months. But the cancer has returned in two of eight patients who weren't immunised. The numbers are far too small to draw firm statistical conclusions. But Professor Christian Ottensmeier, a consultant medical oncologist and director of clinical research at the centre, told Sky News he was "cautiously optimistic". "I am really hopeful, yes," he said. "I am quite excited about it. All the data are pointing in the right direction." A small clinical trial of the vaccine on patients with ovarian cancer in France and the US is also showing promising results How does the vaccine work? The jab, codenamed TG4050, is made by a French company called Transgene using similar technology that produced AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine. DNA from an individual patient's tumour is cut and pasted into a harmless virus. When the genetically modified virus is injected into the body, it trains the immune system to be on watch for cancer cells, hopefully destroying them at an early stage before there [...]