Excitement among patients and researchers as custom-built jabs enter phase 3 trial

Doctors have begun trialling in hundreds of patients the world’s first personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma, as experts hailed its “gamechanging” potential to permanently cure cancer.

Melanoma affects about 132,000 people a year globally and is the biggest skin cancer killer. Currently, surgery is the main treatment although radiotherapy, medicines and chemotherapy are also sometimes used.

Now experts are testing new jabs that are custom-built for each patient and tell their body to hunt down cancer cells to prevent the disease ever coming back.

A phase 2 trial found the vaccines dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients. Now a final, phase 3, trial has been launched and is being led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH).

Dr Heather Shaw, the national coordinating investigator for the trial, said the jabs had the potential to cure people with melanoma and are being tested in other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    6 months ago

    But I was told mRNA vaccines change your DNA and anyone who got one would be dead within a few months!

    Which reminds me, I need to check to see if I’m due for another COVID booster.

    • kescusay@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      6 months ago

      What, you mean there aren’t literal mountains of corpses everywhere due to the billions of mRNA vaccine doses administered? I’m shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

      These cancer treatments sound really promising. I wonder if they can eventually be used for other cancer types?

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        What, you mean there aren’t literal mountains of corpses everywhere due to the billions of mRNA vaccine doses administered?

        Of course there are, the globalists are just keeping the lamestream media from reporting it! You just need to look out the window to see them!

        …okay, not your window, but trust me, they’re there! Do your own research!

      • anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Should be able to. My dummy understanding is the mrna vaccines are programmable so they just need to find the proteins associated with different cancer cells, program an mrna vaccine to tell your white blood cells to kill cancer and blamo.

        • kescusay@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 months ago

          Pretty fucking awesome if they can be used that way for pretty much any cancer. Goodbye chemo, hello cancer vaccines!

          • KneeTitts@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            6 months ago

            One caveat here, if people get a vaccine for skin cancer, they’ll inevitably spend way way more time in the sun… this will lead to a rise in other forms of cancer like leukemia

    • ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      Well, the alternative is a good chance of dieing from cancer and/or radiation poisoning. So even if mRNA vaccines did actually mess with DNA, I’d take the chance for a permanent cure.

      • KneeTitts@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Vaccines represent a prevention, not really a cure. If you prevent something, you never have to cure it.

        • ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          6 months ago

          Well, kinda. Vaccines are tools for “educating” your immune system. Classical vaccines generally work by providing “dead”/harmless examples of a particular infection, so that your immune system will recognize the real thing and stop it early, so it doesn’t develop to much. The immune system takes a while to get going, so “teaching” it in advance makes a huge difference against aggressive, quick acting infections.

          The mRNA vaccines skip most of the “learning phase” and provide the body directly with the template to produce the right antibodies. And this is where the “cure”-part comes in. The whole problem with cancer is that it consists of a variation of your own cells. Which is why the immune system won’t target it. It’s not an infection or foreign. To your immune system it’s just another part of you. mRNA can be used to tell the immune system to attack it anyway, leveraging it against the cancer. But it requires a sample of the cells to be attacked, so as to make the right mRNA for the particular instance of cancer. So it’s not really useable as a preventative thing. At least not yet…