>After decades of disappointment, efforts to create vaccines that can stimulate the immune system to fight cancer are showing renewed promise. Breakthroughs are possible in the coming year. The optimism stems from advances in mrna technology and personalised medicine, and in particular from a melanoma vaccine called mrna-4157, developed by Moderna and Merck, that is performing well in trials. In 2025 the fda, America’s drugs regulator, could approve the vaccine. And in Britain the nhs’s Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad, a tie-up with BioNTech, a pioneer of covid vaccines, aims to fast-track thousands of patients into trials for mrna-based personalised vaccines for colorectal, pancreatic and melanoma cancers.
>Personalised vaccines are tailored to a patient’s specific mutations, and aim to train the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells based on their unique genetic make-up. First comes a biopsy, then the sequencing of the tumour, the identification of mutations likely to generate proteins that would be recognised by the immune system, and finally the manufacturing of a vaccine to target those markers. This can all be done within six weeks, thanks to advances in mrna technology made during the pandemic, and to progress in artificial intelligence, which is used to predict the molecular markers most likely to stimulate the immune system into action.
Obviously not an actual bona fide cure, but damn this feels like the most promising potential development of my lifetime. Learn more about Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative funding cancer research and development here: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/)
GodOfWarNuggets64 on
And of course, Trump will be right there to swoop in and take all the credit.
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>After decades of disappointment, efforts to create vaccines that can stimulate the immune system to fight cancer are showing renewed promise. Breakthroughs are possible in the coming year. The optimism stems from advances in mrna technology and personalised medicine, and in particular from a melanoma vaccine called mrna-4157, developed by Moderna and Merck, that is performing well in trials. In 2025 the fda, America’s drugs regulator, could approve the vaccine. And in Britain the nhs’s Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad, a tie-up with BioNTech, a pioneer of covid vaccines, aims to fast-track thousands of patients into trials for mrna-based personalised vaccines for colorectal, pancreatic and melanoma cancers.
>Personalised vaccines are tailored to a patient’s specific mutations, and aim to train the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells based on their unique genetic make-up. First comes a biopsy, then the sequencing of the tumour, the identification of mutations likely to generate proteins that would be recognised by the immune system, and finally the manufacturing of a vaccine to target those markers. This can all be done within six weeks, thanks to advances in mrna technology made during the pandemic, and to progress in artificial intelligence, which is used to predict the molecular markers most likely to stimulate the immune system into action.
Source: [https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2024/11/20/cancer-vaccines-will-have-a-pivotal-moment-in-2025](https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2024/11/20/cancer-vaccines-will-have-a-pivotal-moment-in-2025)
Obviously not an actual bona fide cure, but damn this feels like the most promising potential development of my lifetime. Learn more about Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative funding cancer research and development here: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/)
And of course, Trump will be right there to swoop in and take all the credit.