Patients asked for help. We developed Ancer.

Driving a strong immune response to T cell epitopes has long been recognized as the key to fighting cancer. Identifying individual T cell epitopes in each person's tumor mutanome is a Big Data problem that computational immunology can solve. That’s why we designed Ancer for personalized cancer vaccines. (Initial publication at this link, most recent one here.).

Every cancer patient deserves their own personalized cancer vaccine.

Each cancer genome is unique, shaped by the battle between the cancer and each individual's own learned immune response. (For more info, see Uğur Şahin's excellent review, here.) Last week marked a watershed moment for personalized cancer vaccines, A pivotal Phase 3 trial confirmed that adding personalized vaccines to standard immune checkpoint therapy improved outcomes.

This is great news for Ancer and for cancer patients. The signal is now clear: vaccines tailored to each patient's unique tumor mutations—and designed for the individual's own HLA—can move the needle on outcomes that matter.

The Ancer to Cancer

We first proposed the use of computational tools for designing personalized cancer vaccines in 2003. When cancer patients reached out to us for help, we started pushing even harder (2015).  But getting Ancer into the clinic has been a bigger problem—mainly because of the one-size-fits-all vaccine mentality that, until recently, prevailed at major vaccine companies. Why not make a one-size-fits-all vaccine? they asked. Aren't cancer mutations the same in every tumor? The answer is a resounding “No.”

EVA Therapeutics has a better approach

Here's how it works: A clinician provides the patient's mutanome (their catalog of tumor mutations). Ancer analyzes the sequence and identifies the best epitopes—the peptide sequences most likely to trigger a robust, durable T cell response. Those epitopes can become the building blocks for either an mRNA-based vaccine or a peptide-based candidate.

For patients and clinicians exploring compassionate use pathways, this is transformative. Rather than trial-and-error, this is a rapid, evidence-based approach that designs a vaccine tailored to the specific mutations driving that patient's cancer.

The Timing is Now

We're at an inflection point. Regulatory pathways are opening. Manufacturing is scaling. Clinical validation is real. A human clinical trial just provided Phase 3 data proving the concept works at scale. Now the field needs infrastructure to design these vaccines quickly, broadly, and effectively.

EVA Tx is positioned to be part of that infrastructure—helping clinicians, researchers, and manufacturers harness computational immunology to unlock the full potential of personalized cancer vaccines.