Patients are already benefiting from personalised cancer vaccines gleaned from the genetic damage found in their own biopsied tumours. Those vaccines are being delivered by the same pioneering mRNA system that gave us the Moderna and
Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 jabs. After decades of research and after finally being vindicated by its pandemic success, messenger RNA (mRNA) has established itself as a vaccine delivery platform so versatile it can be customised to carry individualised cancer vaccines.
Melanoma, for example, is the deadliest form of skin cancer because of the speed with which it can spread around the body, but its treatment is being revolutionised by mRNA vaccine technology that primes patients' immune systems to fight back. Since its Covid-19 success, Moderna has been trialling experimental melanoma vaccines. They're made by identifying the mutating proteins (antigens) in a melanoma cell and then encoding genetic instructions into a molecule of messenger RNA. Once injected, the mRNA molecules train the immune system to mount an antibody response that targets the damaged proteins that are unique to that patient's cancer.
In December, when Moderna announced that melanoma patients who had been "vaccinated" against their own cancers had seen a 44 per cent reduction in their risk of disease progression or death when the treatment was combined with an existing immunotherapy drug, it sparked enormous excitement in the cancer research community.
This story is from the March 31, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the March 31, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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