|
The
messenger RNA, or mRNA, platform may be new to the global public, but
it's a technology that researchers had been betting on for decades. Now
those
bets are paying off, and not just by turning back a pandemic
that killed millions in just a year.
This approach that led to
remarkably safe and effective vaccines against a novel virus is also
showing promise against old enemies such as HIV, and infections that
threaten babies and young children, such as respiratory syncytial virus
(RSV) and metapneumovirus.
BioNTech founders -- and
husband and wife team -- Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci told me on my
"Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction" podcast in March that they
were intrigued by mRNA’s potential to treat cancer. It’s an elegant
solution, they told me, that can potentially target cancers in a
personalized way. Today, the company has eight potential cancer
treatments in human trials.
Moderna is also working
on personalized cancer vaccines.
"We identify
mutations found on a patient's cancer cells," the company says on
its website. Computer algorithms predict the 20 most common mutations.
"We then create a vaccine that encodes for each of these mutations
and load them onto a single mRNA molecule." That's injected into
the patient to try to help orchestrate a better immune response against
the tumors.
This is early research,
but it’s exciting to see where this technology may next be applied --
and what it may be a solution for.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment