First UK patient to try bespoke cancer vaccine 'hopefully looking for a brighter future'

Graham Booth, whose cancer has returned four times in the past decade, told ITV News how chemo and radiotherapy "basically devastated my life"

A father whose cancer has returned four times is "hopefully looking for a brighter future" after becoming the first UK patient to receive a personalised vaccine for head and neck cancers.

Graham Booth was first diagnosed and treated for cancer in 2011. Five years later, his "biggest fear" was confirmed when it returned in 2016, again in 2019, and two more times in 2021.

After undergoing surgery to remove a large part of his jaw, tumours, and surrounding tissue in his mouth, followed recently by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, doctors have told him that if his cancer were to return again - which they believe is likely - there would not be much more they could do.

Graham has now become the first UK patient to take part in a groundbreaking cancer vaccine trial and feels "in a certain sense" it is his last hope.

ITV News was given exclusive access to the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool where researchers have developed a potential bespoke vaccine that could reduce deaths from head and neck cancers, such as in the mouth, throat, tongue and sinus.

How does the bespoke cancer vaccine work?

Researchers say HPV-negative squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck are particularly hard to treat and have a high recurrence rate. The vaccine aims to use the patient's own immune system to fight the disease and reduce the risk of cancer recurring.

Each vaccine is tailored to the individual patient, mimicking the faulty cell that could cause their cancer to grow.

This then "trains" the immune system to recognise, attack and kill any cancer cells the body creates.

After having his first dose of the vaccine, Graham told ITV News he has "mixed emotions", adding: "I'm hopefully looking for a brighter future. A bit of hope that it never returns again."

"It would mean the world to everybody around me. Especially my family who's close to me, my daughter, everybody else," he added.

Graham told ITV News of the toll 10 years of cancer treatment have had on him and his family and described how radiotherapy and chemotherapy "devastated" his life.

"It was that severe. I was told most people don't even complete the treatment because of the severity of it," added the father.

"After the first operation last year in '21, they took the jaw bone and the left hand side of the surrounding tissues. After that operation, there wasn't much left to do if it ever reoccurred."

Later that year, he started to feel as though the cancer was progressing further around his jaw. Doctors confirmed his fears and he underwent further surgery to have another tumour removed.

"There are still options there, but now this trial's come out it opens different doorways. And hopefully it'll open doorways for different people as well," he added.

Professor Christian Ottensmeier, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, told ITV News his team are "very excited" about the trial and believe the treatment "really has legs".

Professor Christian Ottensmeier, principal investigator of the UK trial, sets out how the cancer vaccine works:

Explaining how the treatment works, he said: "I think of this like training sniffer dogs.

"When the cancer cells hide, they avoid the immune system and it makes it harder for the immune system to train the right cells. So what the vaccine does is to train a set of sniffer dogs that are already able to see what is the target."

Unlike most cancer treatments currently available, this vaccine is "very unlikely" to damage healthy cells, said Prof Ottensmeier.

"If this is successful, then it will have few, if any side effects, because it's so targeted that only the bits that are in the cancer will wake up the immune system," he added.

The challenge, he said, is reducing the time it takes to produce a tailor made vaccine for each patient so they can be treated faster.

Researchers say the Phase I trial, the Transgene trial, will recruit around 30 people who have just completed treatment for advanced head and neck cancer. 

The trial will test how well the cancer vaccine triggers an immune response in patients – and whether this reduces the rate of recurrence.

Half of the patients will receive their vaccine immediately after they complete their initial treatment. The other half won’t receive it unless their cancer returns, but will then receive it in addition to the standard treatment for recurrence, say researchers.

The international trial is being carried out at two sites in the UK in Liverpool and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.