Companies like Moderna and Pfizer's partner BioNTech are using mRNA to spur cancer patients' bodies to make vaccines that will – hopefully – prevent recurrences and treatments designed to fight off advanced tumors.
Bobby Fentress learned about messenger RNA months before the rest of the world.
If they prove effective, which won't be known for at least another year or two, they could be added to the arsenal of immune therapies designed to get the body to fight off its own tumors. He said he's more optimistic this time because of how much researchers have learned about the role the immune system plays in cancer.
They had learned how to remove a brake installed by tumors, unleashing the warriors of the immune system. Ten years ago, only about 5% of people with advanced melanoma survived for five years. Now, nearly half make it that long.German scientist Özlem Türeci was focused on cancer at BioNTech, then came COVID-19. It was her 'duty' to help develop a vaccine.
Then the company identified mutations that make protein variants only found on cancerous cells. They then create a single mRNA that triggers the body to make these proteins – just as COVID-19 vaccines trigger production of the spike protein that sits on the surface of the virus. The presence of these protein fragments triggers the immune system to attack anything with that protein.In April 2020, at Sarah Cannon, Fentress got his first shots of mRNA tailored to his tumor.
So far, she said, Moderna, working with partner Merck, has tested these personalized vaccines in about 100 patients. Mutated cancer cells have proteins on their surface that can be targeted by an mRNA vaccine. For a tumor that has, say, five common mutations, a patient could get a combination of five of these vaccines.
Plus, most earlier vaccines predated the checkpoint inhibitors. "The combination is important," Gnad-Vogt said. Dr. David Braun a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said it's always better to not make too may promises to cancer patients. Instead, using mRNA technology, the patient's body could be triggered to produce the protein itself. "It's an elegant and fast method, which does not need big production plants," she said.
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