Moderna: the first cancer vaccines by 2030

The first personalized mRna vaccines against cancer, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune diseases could arrive by 2030. An acceleration gained thanks also to the experience derived from the anti-Covid vaccines. This was reported by the Guardian reporting the announcement of the American company Moderna which, after the anti-Covid vaccines, is working on those against the syncytial virus and against melanoma, for both of which it has obtained breaktrough therapy from the American FDA, i.e. the accelerated approval procedure. For the syncytial virus, in particular, the vaccine has shown an efficacy of 83.7% in preventing at least two symptoms, cough and fever, in the over 60s. What has been done with the anti-Covid vaccines, Moderna specifies, it has allowed cancer vaccine research to proceed quickly, so that the equivalent of 15 years of progress was achieved in just 12-18 months. As reported to the Guardian by Paul Burton, medical director of Moderna, “the company will be able to offer these vaccines in just five years”. And those that do arrive, Burton explains, “will be very effective, and could save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. I believe we will be able to offer personalized vaccines against many different types of cancer to the world‘s population”. These mRna vaccines will work like this: As a first step, a biopsy on cancer cells identifies mutations not present in healthy cells. An algorithm then identifies which mutations are driving tumor growth. A molecule of messenger RNA (mRNA) is then created with instructions for making the antigens that will cause an immune response. The mRNA, once injected, results in parts of proteins identical to those found in cancer cells. Immune cells encounter them and destroy cancer cells carrying the same proteins. In the near future, vaccines against cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases should also be developed. For respiratory diseases, according to Burton, “a single injection may be enough to protect against Covid, flu and syncytial virus”. But mRNA vaccines could be suitable for fighting rare diseases currently without therapies. Italian research is also active on the therapeutic mRna vaccine front, with the Armenise-Harvard immunoregulation laboratory at the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine (Iigm) and the Italian-Swiss biotech Nouscom, which is based on the entry into circulation of the vaccine. Instead, after 7 years of experimentation, the first positive results of the vaccine against liver cancer arrived from the researchers of the Pascale Cancer Institute in Naples. The American research experimented on mice and monkeys then aims at a universal vaccine, which has shown that it is able to break down the defenses that tumors put in place to protect themselves from attacks by the immune system, blocking the diseased cells. Also noteworthy is a new Car-T-based therapy by Dutch researchers which has found early signs of efficacy in some types of solid tumors, both in monotherapy and boosted with an mRna vaccine. The pharmaceutical companies and industry experts themselves recognize the need not to disperse the wealth of experience gained during the pandemic. A Pfizer spokesman stressed that “the company gained 10 years of scientific knowledge in just one year,” while Richard Hackett, CEO of the Coalition for Outbreak Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), which supports independent vaccine research against emerging infectious diseases, he found that “things that would have taken place in 15 years have been compressed into 1.5 years”. Andrew Pollard, head of the British Committee on Vaccinations and Immunization (JCVI), wonders “what will happen, now that there is much more interest in vaccines“, and notes that “we are not investing even the cost of a nuclear submarine ».