-
At the time of publication, all information and statistics were based on publicly accessible data. Some of the data might be out of date. Please visit our Coronavirus Hub and keep up with our Live Updates page to get the most recent information on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The messenger RNA (mRNA) technology utilized in the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna and Pfizer could possibly be applied to the battle against cancer.
“MRNA vaccines target the proteins that cancer cells produce. Dr. Jeffrey A. Metts, chief of staff at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Atlanta, told Healthline that improvements have been noted in the treatment of melanoma.
“However, treating cancer is different from preventing it. Looking at the dramatic decline in cervical cancer, improvements in HPV vaccine recognition, screening and administration have improved over the past decade. You can see what we have achieved,” said Metts.
However, cancer vaccines blur the line between prevention and treatment.
“We have shown that the HPV vaccine can prevent 80-90% of cervical cancers, which is a very powerful strategy in the cancer setting. But it doesn’t address that,” he said.
Conventional vaccinations, like the COVID-19 vaccine, prepare the body’s immune system to recognize and attack viral cells.
Cancer vaccines work similarly, either by making the body’s immune system recognize cancer cells to prevent the cancer from coming back or, as immunotherapy, actively seeking out and destroying tumors in the body.
One reason this works is that mRNA editing is a very flexible technique. “MRNAs can be encoded by any protein you can imagine,” said Dr. Jacob Becraft, co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics, developing mRNA therapeutics and synthetic biology. “We can also introduce mRNA into immune cells, equipping them with improved sensors that detect tumors. This effectively teaches the immune system how to kill tumor cells,” he said.
“Existing therapies require the lab to create synthetic proteins that kill tumors or activate the immune system against tumors. With mRNA, any number of these proteins can be encoded on the same mRNA molecule, triggering tumor cells to “develop their own therapeutics” within the tumor.