Biotechnology · Cancer vaccines
Adventris Pharmaceuticals
A Baltimore startup built around a mutant KRAS peptide vaccine licensed out of Johns Hopkins. Three phase 1 trials of that vaccine are now published. The university ran all three. The company has not yet dosed a patient of its own.
Twenty people who did not have cancer
On July 16, 2026, Johns Hopkins published an unusual trial. The twenty people in it were not patients. They were healthy adults with an inherited predisposition to pancreatic cancer and a small abnormality on imaging, usually a cyst.
Between April 2022 and February 2026 each received four subcutaneous doses of a peptide vaccine over thirteen weeks. Eighteen of the twenty, 90 percent, mounted a measurable T cell response against mutant KRAS, a median 18.2-fold increase. Vaccine-induced clones were still detectable two years later. After a median follow-up of 16.5 months, none had developed pancreatic cancer. Every treatment-related side effect was mild or moderate: sore arms, fatigue, chills, flu-like symptoms.
At the bottom of the Hopkins release, under the conflict of interest heading, sits the sentence that explains why this trial matters commercially: “Adventris Pharmaceuticals has licensed a technology described in this study from the Johns Hopkins University.”
That is the company. Adventris is the vehicle built to carry a vaccine whose human evidence belongs, so far, to a university.
Why KRAS, and why this is hard
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma has a five year survival of about 12 percent. Up to 80 percent of patients who have surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy relapse anyway. KRAS mutations drive up to 90 percent of these tumors and sit in most of the precancerous lesions that precede them, which makes the gene an attractive vaccine target and a crowded one.
The asset, mKRAS-VAX, is a pooled synthetic long peptide vaccine covering six mutations: G12V, G12A, G12R, G12C, G12D and G13D, given with the adjuvant poly-ICLC. The peptides are the same for everyone, so it is an off-the-shelf product rather than a bespoke neoantigen vaccine. That is the commercial argument.
The counterargument is the field’s history. On June 15, 2026, Elicio Therapeutics reported that ELI-002 7P, the closest comparable KRAS vaccine, missed its prespecified primary endpoint of disease-free survival in AMPLIFY-7P, a randomized phase 2 in 144 patients with resected pancreatic cancer across 24 US sites. Elicio salvaged a post hoc signal in completely resected patients and said it would take that into phase 3, subject to financing. A strong immune response is not clinical benefit, and KRAS vaccines have now shown the first without the second in a randomized setting.
Three college friends and a Hopkins laboratory
Jen Herbach, in some records Jenny Lesser Herbach, is chief executive and a co-founder. She spent more than a decade bringing oncology drugs to market at Onyx and Amgen, InterMune and Genentech, Exelixis and Amunix, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, class of 2013. William Collis, whose last company was the data platform Genji, is the third founder Y Combinator lists. The Y Combinator profile notes that Collis has been a lifelong friend of Herbach and Mark Yarchoan since the three met as roommates at Amherst College.
Yarchoan is the clinical half: an associate professor of medical oncology at Johns Hopkins, running an NCI-funded immunotherapy laboratory, and chief medical officer. The scientific co-founder is Elizabeth Jaffee, deputy director of the Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
The journal disclosures name a wider founding group than the company materials do. The Cancer Discovery disclosure states that Amanda L. Huff, Jaffee, Yarchoan and Neeha Zaidi are founders of Adventris and hold equity, and that Jaffee and Zaidi consult for it. Yarchoan’s adds a detail worth keeping: he is co-inventor of cancer vaccine patents, and those patents are managed by Johns Hopkins.
Where the company actually is
Adventris was incorporated in 2022 and went through Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 batch. Its launch post that spring described a first product for lung cancer. By October 2025, on The Social Radars podcast, Herbach called pancreatic cancer the initial target, said the company was close to finalizing the product for human trials, and put first dosing in early 2027 once an investigational new drug application clears the FDA.
The company stays close to its source. Its registered address, 1812 Ashland Avenue, is the Hopkins innovation building in East Baltimore. LinkedIn showed eleven employees in 2026. Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures lists Adventris among its companies, and Refactor Capital lists it in its portfolio.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Asset origin | Licensed from Johns Hopkins University. Four founders and the university are entitled to royalty distributions. Related cancer vaccine patents are managed by Hopkins, not by the company. | Public record |
| Prevention trial, NCT05013216 | Phase 1, sponsor Johns Hopkins, collaborators Stand Up To Cancer and NCI. Started Apr 11, 2022, recruiting, 37 estimated, primary completion Oct 2027. Published results cover 20 participants: 18 responders, all adverse events grade 1 to 2, no cancers at a median 16.5 months. | Peer reviewed |
| Resected pancreatic trial, NCT04117087 | Phase 1, 12 patients treated May 2020 to May 2023 with vaccine plus ipilimumab and nivolumab. 11 of 12 raised a T cell response. Median disease-free survival 6.35 months, median overall survival 29.59 months. At a median 35.8 months, 8 of 12 had recurred. | Peer reviewed |
| Colorectal cohort, same trial | 13 pretreated metastatic mismatch repair proficient patients. Both primary endpoints met. 2 partial responses, disease control 38 percent, median progression-free survival 2.04 months, median overall survival 24.85 months. | Peer reviewed |
| The five year claim | The Hopkins release says that in the 2020 trial, when the vaccine produced a strong immune response, “those patients remained disease-free for at least five years.” The paper reports a median follow-up of 35.8 months at an October 2024 cutoff, and median disease-free survival of 18.8 months in the top three quartiles of response against 2.76 months in the lowest. No five year analysis appears. | Release differs from paper |
| Who sponsors the trials | A ClinicalTrials.gov sponsor search for Adventris returns nothing. All four registered mKRAS-VAX studies are sponsored by Johns Hopkins and funded by NCI, Stand Up To Cancer, the Lustgarten Foundation, Bristol Myers Squibb, Agenus and the Defense Department. | Public record |
| Federal funding to the company | NIH RePORTER returns zero projects for Adventris Pharmaceuticals. | Not found |
| First indication | The Y Combinator launch says the first product is “a vaccine for the treatment of lung cancer that targets the KRAS mutation.” The 2025 founder interview and later profiles say pancreatic cancer. | Company materials disagree |
| Company clinical timeline | An IND in preparation, first dosing targeted for early 2027. No IND, no company-sponsored registration and no approved product appear on the public record. | Company-stated |
Read plainly: the science is real, peer reviewed and unusually well documented for a company this young, and almost none of it is the company’s own work yet. Three 2026 papers establish that this vaccine is safe and reliably provokes T cells against mutant KRAS. None establishes that it changes how long anyone lives. The one randomized readout in this class, from a competitor, missed. Adventris holds a license, a founding team with the laboratory, and a plan to be in its own clinic in 2027.
What to watch
- An IND clearance and a first company-sponsored trial registration. Herbach put first dosing in early 2027.
- Which indication the company files in. The launch copy says lung, everything since says pancreatic.
- The trial now enrolling people whose cysts are being removed, which tests whether vaccine-induced T cells reach precancerous tissue.
- Elicio’s phase 3 decision, which sets the bar for every KRAS vaccine behind it.
- The terms of the Hopkins license, and whether the patents move to the company.
- A priced financing. Nothing has been filed with the SEC.
In their words
“This is just the beginning, but the findings suggest that the immune system is getting activated.”
Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, co-senior author and co-founder, Johns Hopkins release, 2026 · Institution release
“We thought if we can see an immune response in patients with cancer, the vaccine should work even better in people who are at higher risk because of a family history, gene alteration or cyst on the pancreas.”
Neeha Zaidi, MD, co-senior author and co-founder, Johns Hopkins release, 2026 · Institution release
“Overall, this study represents the first proof of concept for the use of vaccines for interception of pancreatic cancer in human patients.”
Neeha Zaidi, MD, AACR release, 2026 · Institution release
“However, larger studies are needed to demonstrate that this effect was in fact due to the vaccine.”
Michael Goggins, MD, co-senior author, AACR release, 2026 · Institution release
“We were shocked at how well it worked.”
Elizabeth Jaffee on the mouse work, to Healio, 2026 · Independent interview
“My dream has been to vaccinate 18- to 20-year-olds and prevent them from developing pancreatic cancer.”
Elizabeth Jaffee, to Healio, 2026 · Independent interview
“We know the science so much better than they do.”
Jen Herbach, CEO, on rejecting investor advice, The Social Radars, 2025, as rendered in a published episode summary · Podcast summary
“In the long run, we envision a world where every adult receives our pan-cancer vaccines annually.”
Adventris Pharmaceuticals company profile, Y Combinator · Company-stated
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordFirst-in-human testing of a mutant KRAS vaccine for cancer interception
- Public recordMutant KRAS vaccine with checkpoint blockade in resected pancreatic cancer
- Public recordMutant KRAS peptide vaccine with checkpoint blockade in metastatic colorectal cancer
- Public recordNCT05013216, NCT04117087, NCT06411691, NCT06782932
- Public recordEDGAR, NIH RePORTER and sponsor searches for Adventris
- Public recordExperimental KRAS vaccine generates immune response in high-risk people
- Public recordAdventris company listing
- IndependentVaccine designed to intercept pancreatic cancer
- IndependentHopkins KRAS vaccine shows durable immune response
- IndependentElicio phase 2 AMPLIFY-7P results and phase 3 strategy
- Podcast summaryFounder Mode: Jen Herbach, CEO, Adventris
- DirectoryRefactor Capital portfolio
- DirectoryAdventris profile and team
- CompanyAdventris company and launch pages
- CompanyAdventris website and LinkedIn page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
