‘Mass-produced cancer vaccine’ a step forward after US mice study
RESEARCHERS in the US have raised hopes for a universal cancer treatment after discovering non-specific mRNA vaccines can eliminate tumours in mice.
The University of Florida study, published in July in Nature Biomedical Engineering, found that mRNA vaccines were able to trigger an immune response in mice as if it were responding to a virus.
Typical mRNA vaccines, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, work by instructing the body to produce proteins that mimic those found in a pathogen. The immune system recognises these proteins as foreign and mounts a protective response. Instead, the Florida team’s vaccine triggered a broad immune response against the mice’s tumours without focusing on specific proteins. The vaccine generated immune responses against melanoma, bone cancer and brain cancer in the mice, either on its own or in combination with a PD-1 inhibitor, an existing immunotherapy. In some cases, it completely eradicated the tumours.
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