So-called personalized medicine will be able to help fight cancer and heart disease, Moderna believes. A Norwegian immunologist shares the optimism.
Millions of lives could be saved by breakthrough vaccine technology. That is the message from the American pharmaceutical company Moderna.
To the British newspaper The Guardian The company says it has ready vaccines against cancer and serious heart disease by the end of the decade.
The technology that is about to be used are so-called personal vaccines, which are produced to fight against diseases at an individual level. This means that a specific vaccine only works for a specific disease in a specific person.
Paul Burton, chief medical officer at Moderna, does not hide his optimism:
– We will have a vaccine that will be very effective, and it can save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
He says that the company is currently developing cancer vaccines against several different types of tumours, in addition to other vaccines.
Moderna became seriously known as a pharmaceutical company during the development of vaccines against covid-19.
Expertly optimistic
Professor of molecular immunology at the University of Oslo, Anne Spurkland shares her optimism about the development in technology.
She explains that the technology behind, among other things, vaccines against cancer involves making specific mRNA moleculesmRNA moleculesType of molecule that transfers and converts genetic information from DNA to proteins in the body’s cells. which can cause the body’s immune system to react to exactly the cancer you have. One simply makes tailor-made vaccines for individual individuals.
– This goes under the concept of personalized medicine, she says.
She emphasizes that it is important to distinguish between preventive and therapeutic vaccines.
The vaccines against covid-19 are examples of preventive vaccines, which are often included in mass vaccination programmes. Therapeutic vaccines are given individually after the disease has been diagnosed.
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Something else that will possibly be able to be cured by vaccines in the future is the dementia disease Alzheimer’s.
The immunologist states that the major obstacle to development is currently about better understanding the disease itself, not necessarily the vaccine technology.
– For example, it is now believed that there is a single protein in the brain that can be one of the causes of Alzheimer’s, explains Spurkland and continues:
– Vaccines work via the immune system. In order to vaccinate against this disease, one must understand how the immune system can be used to slow down or stop the disease process.
She explains that the technology to create certain genetic molecules that make this type of vaccine possible has existed for a long time. It is the production capacity and the price that have dropped dramatically in recent years, and that is what is revolutionary in her eyes.
– This type of technology cost an awful lot until a few years ago.
– Is it the case that, for example, cancer can be cured?
– Well, we already know that the immune system can in some cases be used to make people cancer-free. And you can call that a cure, she replies and elaborates:
– The treatment “gets going again” immune cells that have already detected the cancer. But unfortunately this treatment only has a good effect in a small proportion of cancer patients.
She believes that we will have more trials and studies where such vaccines are tested, but does not hide the fact that there is a lot of research that remains:
– Every cancer is unique. There is a close interaction between the cancer cells, the normal tissue and the immune system, which is decisive for how the cancer responds to vaccines and other treatment.
