Will there be a cancer vaccine soon? – 08/11/2023 – Science

In just a few years, messenger RNA (mRNA) technology has revolutionized medicine. During the Covid-19 pandemic, highly effective vaccines against the Sars-Cov-2 virus were developed in just a few months thanks to this technology.

Even if the virus develops more aggressive mutations, tailor-made vaccines can be developed again in a short time thanks to mRNA technology. But this advance, recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, can achieve much more.

mRNA technology has also given new impetus to cancer research. The CEO of the biotechnology company CureVac, Alexander Zehnder, wants to introduce vaccines based on this technology to the market within a maximum period of five years.

The development of vaccines against certain types of cancer would be a dream come true for humanity. “Research on cancer vaccines has been carried out for 20 years. Current progress, however, is enormous”, says Zehnder. “We gained a lot of experience during the pandemic and artificial intelligence is so advanced that it can solve many problems in mRNA programming”, explained the head of CureVac in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Cancer vaccines stimulate the immune system so that the body’s own defenses can specifically fight tumor cells. “The deadly factor in cancer is the fact that it continues to grow. The vaccine aims to contain this growth, even if the cancer is already metastatic. Cancer, in this way, becomes a chronic disease that can be lived with for decades. It’s no longer a death sentence,” Zehnder said.

Race for the vaccine

In addition to CureVac, other companies invest heavily in cancer research. In early October, the company BioNTech published promising preliminary results from an ongoing clinical study. The effectiveness of its mRNA cancer vaccine, CARVac, is already being tested in guinea pigs.

BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel that, according to his estimate, there will be cancer vaccines available in the coming years. “We believe it will be possible to produce them on a large scale before 2030.”

In the long term, vaccines tend to replace conventional cancer treatment. This would also be a very positive factor, since chemotherapy or radiation therapies are extremely aggressive for patients.

“Chemotherapy or radiation never only fights the tumor, but also healthy tissue. That’s why there are so many side effects,” Zehnder explained. “The advantage of using mRNA is that the immune system itself is stimulated and specifically fights cancer, and nothing else.”

How does the vaccine work?

T cells, or T lymphocytes, help the body fight infections by destroying diseased cells or stimulating other immune cells to act, but they have difficulty recognizing cancer cells, which CAR-T cells can do.

Treatment with CAR-T cells was approved in Europe in 2018 and has been used mainly to treat leukemia, the so-called blood cancer.

However, this very effective form of immunotherapy is unaffordable for many. According to the German Cancer Research Center in Germany, manufacturers charge up to 320,000 euros for the production of these immune cells for just one patient.

In this type of immunotherapy, T cells are filtered from leukocytes – white blood cells – in the patient’s blood. They are then genetically modified to form chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on the surface. This results in a receiver whose different components don’t fit together.

Vaccines make tumor cells visible

If the CAR-T cells produced in this way are injected back into the patient, they home specifically to the cancer cells. The immune system is activated and attacks the tumor cells. Future vaccines could support this process if, for example, CAR-T cells cannot find or are too weakened to fight tumor cells.

To make tumor cells more visible, the Claudin-6 protein is introduced into the cancer cell with the help of mRNA technology. This creates an antigen that lodges on the surface of the tumor cell, making it easier to recognize and combat by CAR-T.

Until now, modified T cells only fought blood cancer. But rapid advances in mRNA technology raise hopes that there may be effective, less aggressive therapies in the future, not just for leukemia but also for other types of cancer.

There are promising perspectives in the fight against skin cancer (melanoma), lung, breast and pancreatic cancer, among others.