the mRNA revolution, according to Moderna-breaking latest news

Second Paul Burton, medical director of the American company Moderna, by 2030 treatments for “all types of pathologies” will be available. “We will have the cancer vaccine and it will be highly effective and save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines against different types of cancer to people around the world,” he said in an interview with the Guardian
. Studies on vaccinations against cancer, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune diseases continue in great strides thanks to the acceleration in the development of mRNA with the coronavirus vaccine: in just one and a half years, scientific knowledge of a decade has been acquired. Burton said: “I think we’ll have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that weren’t curable before, and I think 10 years from now we’ll be getting closer to a world where you can truly identify the genetic cause of a disease and, relatively easily, , repair the defect using mRNA-based technology.”

The mRNA revolution

Scientists around the world are convinced that the mRNA revolution will probably change the world more than the discovery of antibiotics. In fact, this macromolecule (it is thought to have been the very first molecule of life, even before DNA), properly “educated” it can transmit instructions to diseased cells to defend themselves against viruses and bacteria or repair diseased cells. After being decisive for anti-Covid vaccines, mRNA technology could also change the therapies of many other diseases. The potential of laboratory-produced mRNA-based vaccines and medicines is that the mRNA tells the cells which proteins to make and the therapy basically consists of a instruction list: mRNA could be exploited to order cells to produce molecules capable of repairing damaged organs, organizing the immune response against a virus, improving blood circulation (and consequently lowering the risk of strokes and heart attacks), fighting hereditary diseases .

How therapeutic cancer vaccines will work

In the oncological field, first of all a biopsy will be performed on the tumor cells: the genetic material will be sequenced to identify mutations that are not present in healthy cells; an algorithm will identify which mutations drive tumor growth and stimulate the activation of the immune system; at this point a messenger RNA molecule will be created with instructions for producing specific antigens against disease that will lead to an immune response; the injected mRNA will result in parts of proteins identical to those found in cancer cells. At this point the immune cells will encounter and destroy the cancer cells carrying the same proteins. An mRNA-based cancer vaccine would alert the immune system to a tumor already growing in a patient’s body, so it can attack and destroy it, without destroying healthy cells.

Not just infectious diseases

Paul Burton stressed: “I think what we’ve learned in the last few months is that if you’ve ever thought that mRNA was just for infectious disease, or just for Covid, the evidence now is that that’s definitely not the case. mRNA can be applied to all kinds of disease areas: cancer, infectious diseases, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, rare diseases. We have studies in all of these areas, and they’ve all shown great promise.” To date, the American FDA has given a positive opinion for an mRNA vaccine to treat some types of melanoma.

The other experiments

It is not always the immune system that comes into play because the mRNA is able to provide instructions also for the construction of molecules that are necessary at that moment. Moderna is also working on a vaccine capable of supplying a molecule (VEG-A) capable of rebuilding the heart blood vessels in those suffering from a heart attack: in this way the probability of survival would be increased. Other mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, aim to provide cells with the instructions to produce proteins that we need every day but which, due to genetic or degenerative diseases, we do not produce. So instead of fixing defective genes with techniques like CRISPR Cas9, the idea is to teach cells to make proteins for which there are no instructions.

In January, Moderna announced the results of a late-stage study of its investigational RSV mRNA vaccine, suggesting it was 83.7 percent effective in preventing at least two symptoms, such as cough and fever, in adults aged 8 and older. at 60 years old. Pfizer, another company that produces the Covid vaccine has started recruiting for a late-stage clinical trial of an mRNA-based flu vaccine and has its sights set on other infectious diseases, including shingles. BioNTech already has several ongoing clinical trials of vaccines targeting solid tumors, such as melanoma, breast or ovarian cancer. Moderna is also working on mRNA vaccines capable of recognizing mutations in a gene (KRAS) implicated in 20% of human cancers, while CureVac is conducting trials for a vaccine against a type of lung cancer.