The creation of a cure for cancer will be a huge breakthrough for all of humanity, but disease is known to be much better prevented than cured. And recently, according to Bloomberg, a group of scientists from the United States tested for the first time on a person a personalized (that is, created for a specific patient) cancer vaccine.
The first person to receive a unique vaccine was Glenda Cleaver, and the funding came from the startup Moderna Therapeutics. Scientists sequenced the girl's genome and found a number of mutations in it. These mutations, according to experts, in the future could cause the appearance of various forms of cancer in the girl. Glenda's messenger RNA was used to create a vaccine with the correct “instructions” for assembling molecules that target 20 potentially hazardous proteins. At the moment, the patient is doing well, but scientists continue to monitor Glenda.
It should be noted that this is not the first time such a vaccine has been created. Back in 2010, Dendreon was able to create a similar drug, but it was extremely expensive to manufacture and failed to prove its effectiveness. Do not lag behind American researchers and their colleagues. For example, the German company BioNTech has completed the research phase of a vaccine against melanoma, and Gritstone Oncology is planning to test a multivaccine against cancer in 2018. In addition, scientists at Neon Therapeutics will receive the first test results for their own vaccine for bladder cancer, non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma next year. Given the huge interest of a number of companies in the development of a vaccine, I would like to believe that such a medicine will still be created in the near future and will save more than one hundred lives.
Vladimir Kuznetsov