How far off is a vaccine for cancer?

Technology honed in the battle against Covid-19 could see vaccines that target cancer readily available by 2030.

Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci co-founded BioNTech, the German company that partnered with Pfizer to manufacture an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine that would prove to be vital in the global fight to stem the pandemic. Now they say they have made further breakthroughs that could “lead to new treatments for melanoma, bowel cancer and other tumour types”, according to the BBC.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Şahin said that cancer vaccines based on mRNA might be ready to use in patients “before 2030”, The Guardian reported.

BioNTech has “several trials in progress”, according to the broadcaster, “including one where patients are given a personalised vaccine, to prompt their immune system to attack their disease”.

As The Guardian explained, an mRNA Covid vaccine works “by ferrying the genetic instructions for essentially harmless spike proteins on the Covid virus into the body”.

These instructions are then “taken up by cells which churn out the spike protein”. The proteins, known as antigens, “are then used as ‘wanted posters’ – telling the immune system’s antibodies and other defences what to search for and attack”.

Şahin and Türeci hope that a vaccine targeting cancer will work through a similar process, although in this case, the vaccine would contribute to the creation of “cancer antigens which distinguish cancer cells from normal cells”, explained Türeci.

BioNTech had originally been working on cancer vaccines before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe, but the company “pivoted to produce Covid vaccines in the face of the global emergency”, said The Guardian.

It hopes to develop treatments for bowel cancer, melanoma and other cancers, but there are “substantial hurdles” to overcome. Tumour cells are “studded with a wide variety of different proteins” that can make it “extremely difficult to make a vaccine that targets all of the cancer cells and no healthy tissues”, explained the paper.

Speaking to Kuenssberg, Türeci said that the pandemic had given the company an opportunity to learn how to manufacture mRNA vaccines faster, as well as providing a better understanding of how patients’ immune systems responded to mRNA.