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Scientists have developed an mRNA vaccine that boosts tumor-fighting effects, showing promising results that would possibly lead to universal cancer vaccines.
Scientists Test mRNA Shot That ‘Wakes Up’ Immune System Against Cancer (Credit- Pexels)
Scientists have developed an experimental mRNA vaccine that boosts the tumor-fighting effects of immunotherapy. This mouse-model study is a breakthrough in the direction of developing a universal vaccine to “wake up” the immune system against cancer. The study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the University of Florida.
As per the study, pairing the test vaccine with common anticancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors triggered a strong antitumor response. The researchers cited in the paper said the surprising element in this outcome is the promising results are derived not by attacking a specific target protein expressed in the tumor, but by simply revving up the immune system – spurring it to respond as if fighting a virus.
A report by News Medical quoted senior author Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., a UF Health pediatric oncologist as saying that these results are a potential new treatment path – an alternative to surgery, radiation and chemotherapy – with broad implications for battling many types of of treatment-resistant tumors.
“This paper describes a very unexpected and exciting observation: that even a vaccine not specific to any particular tumor or virus – so long as it is an mRNA vaccine – could lead to tumor-specific effects,” said Sayour.
“This finding is a proof of concept that these vaccines potentially could be commercialized as universal cancer vaccines to sensitize the immune system against a patient’s individual tumor,” he added.
Sayour’s research team tested a ‘generalised mRNA vaccine’, it means that this vaccine is not aimed at a specific virus or mutated cells of cancer but engineered simply to prompt a strong immune system response.
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