2025 New Treatment Innovation - A/Prof Pouya Faridi

Pancreatic cancer is one of the toughest cancers to treat, and survival rates have barely budged in years. Doctors are now testing a new kind of vaccine that teaches your body’s defence cells—called immune cells—to spot and destroy cancer. Today, each vaccine is made just for one person: scientists study that person’s tumour “flags” and then build a matching shot. That takes months, costs a fortune and can’t help many people fast.

Our project takes a different path. Instead of tailoring a shot for every patient’s tumour, we hunt for signs that nearly all pancreatic cancers share. If we find one or two shared markers, we can make a single vaccine for lots of people. We’d produce it in big batches, store it on the shelf and ship it when needed—much faster and cheaper than a custom shot.

We focus on a molecule called HLA-G (think of it as a tiny display stand on each cell).

Healthy adults have almost none of it, but many pancreatic tumours light up with HLA-G. Because it’s almost absent on normal cells, it’s a clear bullseye for our immune system.

Here’s how we do it in the lab: we grow pancreatic cancer cells and collect the tiny protein pieces that HLA-G displays. Those bits—called peptides—act like wanted posters for immune cells. We record which peptides keep popping up on different lab samples.

Next, we test patient tumours to prove that the same peptides appear there. Spotting the same peptides in real tumours shows they’re true cancer markers, not just lab oddities. With that list of shared targets, we design a vaccine that trains immune cells to recognise them.

A universal, “one-size-fits-many” pancreatic-cancer vaccine could then be administered immediately—no long wait for a custom version. Big clinical trials would be simpler, and far more patients could get help quickly. In the end, this approach could make treatment safer, more powerful and available to many more people—offering hope and saving lives.