Is IO102-IO103 legal in Canada?

A cancer vaccine made of two peptides, given as a shot along with the immune drug pembrolizumab for advanced melanoma. In a 407 person final-stage trial, the typical time before the cancer got worse was 19.4 months with the vaccine, against 11.0 months without it. That gap just missed the bar the trial set in advance, so the trial counts as a miss.

Most cancer vaccines try to train immune cells to attack the tumour. IO102-IO103 aims somewhere else.

How it works: In people, the vaccine raises immune cells in the blood that recognise the IDO1 and PD-L1 peptides. That was measured with a blood test in the earlier melanoma study and in a head and neck study.

Approval history: Not FDA approved. A final-stage study in advanced melanoma, given as the first treatment (407 people), missed its main goal. It came close but fell just short of the bar the study had set (Annals of Oncology, 2026).

Allows a drug to be sold by issuing a Notice of Compliance and a Drug Identification Number (DIN). A compound that is not allowed for sale cannot legally be sold for use in people. Bringing in prescription drugs for your own use is also limited.

The legal category above is how The Longevity Archive reads Health Canada, Health Products and Food Branch listings for IO102-IO103 on the reviewed date. It is not a legal opinion. Rules change. Bringing a compound into the country, prescribing it and owning it can each be treated differently. Check with the agency before you act on anything here.

Check Health Canada directly

Whether IO102-IO103 is banned in sport is set by the World Anti-Doping Code and by military rules, not by its legal status in Canada. Before you compete or get tested, look up IO102-IO103 by name on the Prohibited List, or look up a named product in Global DRO. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, category S0 bans, at all times, any drug-like substance that meets two tests. No other section of the List covers it. And no government health regulator anywhere has a current approval for it as a treatment in people. Many substances that are approved somewhere are banned by name in another section. So approval does not mean a substance is allowed in sport.

• WADA Prohibited List
• Global DRO (check a named product)
• USADA (US athletes)
• Operation Supplement Safety (US service members)

The rules you compete or serve under decide this, not this page.