An instruction made to reach the cells which then wipe out the “bad” ones, here are Moderna’s cancer vaccines
The words of the medical director Paul Burton have in fact given breath to the world, because it is a world in which the human species fight against neoplasms actively for a century but with results that are flattering without being fundamental: that’s why understanding how Moderna’s cancer vaccines work and why they’re only being talked about today. The timing is unexpected, to hear the announcement: by 2023 there will be specialized products to fight and eradicate certain types of cancer.
Moderna’s cancer vaccines
The mission is therefore to fight cancer and other disabling diseases such as heart attack and autoimmune diseases using vaccines. What is the key to understanding the extent of this acceleration? It is “pandemic”, with Burton’s declarations to the Guardian that they are going around the world (and the stock exchanges). But let’s try to understand how we got there. The figure is what Covid has in a certain sense “put wings on my feet” a research and experimentation and the track was the revolutionary one of mRNA technologywhich has led to an acceleration of about 18 years old.
The genetic way to beat evil
As? Burton said it: the aim is “to be able to identify with certainty the genetic cause of a disease”. Once that’s done with the mRNA technology put on the field against covid, it can be done the same thing that was done against the virus. What? Simply “teach the cells of our body to make the right protein capable of unleashing the immune system against the pathology it wants to fight”. In short, by busily trying to stop the coronavirus, scientists have made great strides on the road to “ordering” certain cell responses. Personalized cancer vaccines have a procedure onset: a patient’s tumor biopsyto be sent to the laboratory.
Cells learn “to wage war”
At that point yes would detect genetic mutations characteristics of the diseased cells compared with the healthy ones. Phase two is the selection entrusted to an algorithm that identifies which are the mutations that drive the growth of the tumor, those on which to intervene to “order” the response of the immune system against neoplasm. The third step, with millions of equipment already tested and partly useful also for the need, would be to create a molecule of mRNA.
The messenger RNA that teaches you how to do it
It is ribonucleic acid, messenger RNA which has all the instructions in code and which would contain the one to make the cell synthesize le proteins that “block” growth of the tumor. It aims at the antigens: just like for la spike of SARS-CoV-2. They will be the ones to trigger an immune response. The final faee is the one for which the mRNA would be used by the body to produce protein fragments identical to those found on cancer cells. The immune system then “goes to school” and uses that info to destroy every cell that has those specific characteristics. So to destroy cancer “from within”.