Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo Department of
Integrated Biosciences

While mRNA vaccines have been a great success in developing a COVID-19 vaccine, no cancer vaccine therapy has been approved, and there is currently a global race to create one. In clinical development of T cell therapy, such as CART and TCR-T, Japan is lagging far behind the United States, China, and Europe. None have shown efficacy in solid tumors; this is also a global competition. On the other hand, CAR/TCR-T cell therapy has many problems, including high cost, complexity, and safety concerns, and there are few clinical trials in Japan, so it has not become widespread. Our laboratory has selected 10 common cancer antigens that broadly cover solid tumors. In addition to developing cancer mRNA vaccine therapy that combines these common cancer antigens, we are also developing a low-cost, simple, and safe T cell therapy in which multiple CARs or TCRs that target these common cancer antigens are transiently expressed in T cells and administered. We aim to make this a reality and provide methods to prevent recurrence and treat all cancer patients.