Personalized cancer vaccine helps pancreatic cancer patient not only to survive, but thrive

Joanie Kriens has shown determination and resilience in battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a multifaceted approach involving several medical professionals who are just as determined and resilient, even after delivering the direst of diagnoses.

Joanie Kriens thriving

Refusing to be defeated, these physicians identified treatments to find “… a path to a stable outcome, and the real possibility of the reduction of a potentially terminal cancer to a chronic condition to be managed for a long lifetime,” as Joanie’s husband Steve writes in this inspiring article from the 1440 Foundation blog.

“… there are vaccines under development to further assist in the strategy. In our case, this meant finding Washington University in St. Louis, and its work on neoantigen vaccines developed from the genetic information describing the precise biology of the tumor found in Joanie's body. These personalized precision approaches feel to us like the future of successful cancer treatments; find out what exactly is going on with the unique understanding that comes from genetic sequencing and then design a personalized vaccine to boost the immune system's capacity to respond, in concept not unlike the vaccines for Covid-19 or the flu, or polio of the past.”

We would like to note that Joanie is not affiliated with the Jaime Leandro Foundation; she met JLF President William Hoos during her search for innovative interventions and treatments, and JLF shares her story here because it is the kind of personalized vaccine that we help to produce. Read Joanie’s story.