With Personalized Cancer Vaccines On the Horizon, What Is Nurses’ Role?
Nurses and APPs provide an essential link between physicians and patients when facilitating and monitoring outcomes with personalized cancer vaccines.
An expert explained that nurses will play a central role in helping patients navigate the multidisciplinary care setting as a personalized cancer vaccine has been shown to help prevent future relapse among patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC).
Publishing their phase 1 clinical trial findings in Nature1, researchers showed that among all nine patients with stage 3 or 4 clear cell renal cell carcinoma, a successful anti-cancer immune response was generated after initiation of treatment with the personalized cancer vaccine administered after full resection. At a median data cut-off of 34.7 months, median disease-free survival was not reached.
Co-senior author Catherine Wu, MD, chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as well as an institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, spoke with Oncology Nursing News about the multidisciplinary approach often required by personalized medicine. She explained how she envisions the role of the oncology nurse or advanced practice provider in collaborating with other members of the healthcare team to ensure optimal patient outcomes with this type of vaccine.
Transcript:
We always have to think about the patient experience, and I think our nursing colleagues are on the front lines, and I think that being able to communicate what is happening at different times of this relatively complex therapy is super important. It helps to reinforce how to attain the steps that are there, how to manage the vaccines and making sure that the patients keep on schedule.
It does require communication with the surgeon, with the genomicist, with the pharmacist, and then also monitoring thereafter, so going through radiology and phlebotomy so that we can monitor the immune responses. So, at each of those steps, there needs to be someone at the center who's going to help the patient navigate through all of that, and so that's where I think our nursing colleagues play a very central role.
Reference
- Braun DA, Moranzoni G, Chea V, et al. A neoantigen vaccine generates antitumour immunity in renal cell carcinoma. Nature. Published online February 5, 2025. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08507-5
