Doctors have begun trialling the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.
Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.
Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.
The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.
Any idea yet how long it might last? Could this ever be something that we take young (either as kids or now in my 30s) and just not be afraid of lung cancer?
Unless this one works differently than the one I read about a month or so ago, which isn’t at all clear from this article, no, probably not something we can get as kids.
The reason is that, at least at the moment, you need a sample of the cancer itself and protein markers for each individual, and each cancer type, so it’s a vaccine that you get only after you get the cancer. Plus it’s multiple doses over the course of several weeks.
They also aren’t sure if the cancer will come back after being eradicated, so for now they have no idea how effective it will be, nor how long it’ll last.
But this is a technology very much in its infancy. The first trial ever was earlier this year, so… who knows where it’ll go from there. Maybe they will be able to isolate enough common markers for enough cancers to have a childhood vax for prevention. Almost certainly a long ways off tho.
If it’s a post disease treatment isn’t it just a cure vs a vaccine then?
It is a therapeutic vaccine
TIL, thanks.