According to Moderna’s CEO, vaccines for cancer and heart disease could be ready by the end of the decade.
Dr. Paul Burton said the progress made in mRNA – the technology used to make his company’s flagship Covid shot – has ushered in a golden age of vaccines.
He predicts that by 2030 there will be vaccines for “all kinds of” incurable diseases, which could save “hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.”
Early studies have already shown “huge promise,” he added. But they probably won’t be your typical vaccine – they will have to be highly personalized and expensive.
Scientists at Moderna say it may be possible to vaccinate against heart disease and cancer within five years (stock image)
Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the US, behind 1.3 million deaths each year – or more than one in three recorded deaths.
Dr. Paul Burton, the vaccine maker’s CEO, shared The protectorWe will have that vaccine and it will be very effective, and it will save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.
“I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines against multiple different tumor types to people all over the world.”
Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said mRNA vaccines could be used to fight cancer and heart disease
He added: ‘I think what we’ve learned over the past few months is that if you ever thought mRNA was just for infectious diseases, or just for Covid, the evidence is now that that’s definitely not the case.
‘It can be applied to all kinds of disease areas; We’re in cancer, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, rare disease.
“We have studies in all those areas and they’ve all shown tremendous promise.”
Dr. Burton didn’t say how the vaccines would work, but previous studies have shown how mRNA could be used to fight cancer.
MRNA vaccines work by instructing cells to produce a protein that elicits an immune response against a specific pathogen, such as Covid.
Scientists say these instructions could also be modified to tell cells to make the antigens from the surface of cancer cells, alert the immune system to cancer cells and trigger an attack.
To vaccinate someone against cancer, doctors would first take a biopsy of the person’s tumor.
They would then identify the antigen on the cancer cells and code the mRNA vaccine to prompt cells to make the same antigen.
The vaccine would then be administered to a patient, activating their cells to make the antigen and mount an immune response against it.
Immune cells would then be trained to destroy cancer cells that remain in the body and detect cancer cells that return.
The new injection – designed for people with high-risk melanoma – is in the second of three trials and a verdict on whether it works or not is expected within months. It uses mRNA technology that takes bits of genetic code from patients’ tumors into their cells and teaches the body to fight the cancer. The vaccine is given to people after surgery to prevent the tumor from coming back, and it is tailor-made for each patient, meaning no two injections will be the same
The chart above shows the leading causes of death in the United States in 2020 and 2021. Cancer and heart disease were the leading causes of death even during the Covid pandemic
Doctors say mRNA vaccines can be customized for each patient to account for different types of cancer and differences between patients. But this is likely to prove expensive.
Trials of mRNA cancer vaccines are already underway in the UK and US, with results expected in the coming months.
They include Moderna’s own cancer vaccine, which received “breakthrough therapy” status from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February, paving the way for accelerated approval.
The injection, given along with an immunotherapy drug from Merck, would be used to treat patients recovering from advanced melanoma who are most at risk of tumor recurrence.
A phase two trial showed that the combination reduced the risk of relapse or death after surgery by 44 percent compared to the immunotherapy drug alone.
Research into vaccines against heart disease is in its early stages. They may work by targeting proteins that cause high blood cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease.
Others suggest they could also be used to trigger the production of specific proteins involved in repairing the heart and its function.
In a study published last year, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania used mRNA to redesign cells in mice to clear fibrosis.
The vaccines can also be engineered to treat autoimmune diseaseswhere the body mistakenly attacks healthy cells, such as in cases of multiple sclerosis.
In MS, immune cells begin to attack the myelin sheath that protects nerve cells, causing symptoms such as muscle spasms, pain, and limited mobility.
Moderna has already pushed the boundaries of mRNA vaccines against disease, designing an injection to prime the immune system to fight RSV – which also received “breakthrough” status from the FDA.
The results showed that it was 83 percent effective in preventing at least two symptoms, such as cough and fever, in adults age 60 and older.
In comparison, the annual flu shot is estimated to reduce disease risk by between 40 and 60 percent.
Pfizer has also begun recruiting for late-stage clinical trials of an mRNA-based flu vaccine and is developing vaccines against other diseases such as shingles.