Russian President Vladimir Putin caused quite a stir last week by announcing with great fanfare that scientists from the Slavic country were working on a revolutionary cancer vaccine. “We are getting closer to creating next-generation cancer vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs,” explained the Kremlin leader.
“Putting all possible precautions, knowing that the thing comes from where it comes from,” began the director of La Linterna, Ángel Expósito, who asked the scientific disseminator of COPE about the credibility of this announcement, Jorge Mayor, also director of Quo magazine. “Vladimir Putin said a few days ago that his scientists were working on a cancer vaccine and that they could soon have it ready. What do we say about that?” asked the communicator.
Mayor clarifies what is behind Putin’s vaccines
“This has generated a very big scientific stir because the cancer vaccine as such does not exist,” began Jorge Alcalde, who insisted in his section on science this Wednesday that “There is no general vaccine against tumors”. Thus, he explained to Expósito that the current medical procedure to fight cancer in the vast majority of countries consists of five steps: “You have to identify each of the cancers, know them better, register them and then generate therapies that can combat them.” one by one, personified.”
Thus, for the expert, what Putin has announced is “a toast to the sun” while the intentions are, according to the Mayor, “to show that his country is more advanced in immunotherapy than in other places on the planet,” he comments. Of course, he clarifies that the Russian president “has not said anything new, nor has he said anything that has been published in any scientific publication.” “More like bragging to which we should not pay much attention,” says the director of the magazine Quo.
Furthermore, he wanted to insist that, at least in the rest of the planet, “scientists work every day to make immunotherapies against different cancers.” Even the Mayor pours cold water on La Linterna by emphasizing that “we are not expecting to find a vaccine against cancer, as such it will never exist.” “Coming from who it comes from, well imagine”, adds Ángel Expósito for his part.
The latest advance against multiple myeloma cancer
Regardless, the COPE communicator wanted to focus on real progress in Spain against cancer. And in recent years there has been a lot of talk about the so-called CAR-T, a therapy that is achieving positive results. But, apart from it, there is an immunotherapy that seems to be even more effective against some types of cancer and that, fundamentally, is working against multiple myeloma.
Multiple myelanoma is a cancer that affects plasma cells, those responsible for creating immunity in the body, which we know as white blood cells. Thus, when the cells responsible for protecting us, that is, white blood cells, begin to act against our own body, numerous tumors form in the bones throughout the body.
“Treatments with chemotherapy or radiotherapy are not always satisfactory for these patients who, over time, relapse into the disease, but a group of Spanish researchers has achieved an important advance: the so-called dagger cells,” explains Expósito. A type of enhanced immunotherapy that is more effective than CAR-T, an evolution for the better in that what it does is educate the cells of the immune system to attack cancer.
2024-02-21 19:40:55
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