A brain-cancer vaccine just doubled long-term survival in its trial — rare hope for glioblastoma

Glioblastoma is one of the cruelest diagnoses in medicine — about 15,000 Americans a year, and barely any progress in treatment in two decades. So the numbers from the Phase 2b SURVIVE trial landed like a thunderclap: patients 65 and under who received the SurVaxM vaccine lived a median of 24.2 months versus 20.2 on placebo, and 42% were still alive past 30 months — more than double the 18% on placebo. The vaccine trains the immune system to hunt survivin, a protein found in roughly 95% of glioblastomas, and caused mostly mild injection-site soreness across 233 patients at 11 cancer centers. The maker, MimiVax, now plans to discuss fast-track approval with the FDA.