HHS Confirms New Investment in Cancer Vaccines

‘Beating cancer once shouldn’t mean living in fear of its return,’ the agency said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington on April 28, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

U.S. health agencies are investing in vaccines that are aimed at preventing cancer from returning, officials said on March 22.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Cancer Institute have started a public-private partnership to pay for clinical trials that will test vaccines developed to generate an immune attack on tumors, the agencies said.

“Beating cancer once shouldn’t mean living in fear of its return,” HHS stated in a post on Facebook.

“[The agencies are] spearheading a $200 [million] public-private partnership to drive innovative cancer treatments that prevent recurrence,” it stated.

Dr. Anthony Letai, director of the National Cancer Institute, wrote on X that cancer vaccines “show real promise, especially for hard-to-treat cancer.”

He said that a program is now underway with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a nonprofit Congress started to lead public-private partnerships that achieve medical breakthroughs, “to advance promising cancer vaccine technologies through rigorous clinical trials.”

Small, early-stage trials have shown promising results. In one phase one trial featuring nine participants, none experienced recurrence of kidney cancer about 40 months after surgery, researchers reported on Feb. 5, 2025. The vaccine was developed by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

When asked for details about the new effort, including which companies would receive funding, an HHS spokesperson on March 23 pointed to a Wall Street Journal article that does not list specific companies but states that the vaccines will be for people who developed cancer, received treatment, and are deemed at risk for cancer returning. The outlet reported that the effort was aiming to collect $100 million from the government and another $100 million from private sources.

“What’s exciting about this is that there are early signals from clinical trials that we can actually have an impact even in some very difficult settings where we have very little to offer patients,” Letai told the paper.

Stacey Adam, a vice president at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, said: “Nothing of this scale has been attempted in cancer vaccines before. This should be a huge launchpad for moving the field forward at a much-faster pace.”

The effort is expected to fund, among other vaccines, those using mRNA technology.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2025 canceled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccines and therapeutics directed at other illnesses.

“The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like [COVID-19] and flu,” he said at the time.

No cancer vaccines were affected by the move.