A new vaccine against cancer has been announced by the Russian Ministry of Health that it says will be available to patients from early 2025—but scientists remain skeptical.
Professor Kingston Mills, a prominent immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, told Newsweek: “Until we see data from a clinical trial, there has to be skepticism about this.
“There’s nothing in scientific journals that I can see about it. That’s where you usually would start reading, as a scientist, about a breakthrough.
“I don’t see any paper about this, so I have nothing to go on in terms of what the science is.”
That’s not to say that Russian scientists have not developed a vaccine against some sort of cancer; Mills said: “The idea of a cancer vaccine is real.”
Dr. David Jenkinson, head of childhood cancer at medical research charity Life Arc, told Newsweek: “There are a number of vaccines that are already used to prevent cancers by targeting viruses that can sometimes cause cancer, such as HPV vaccination to prevent cervical cancer.”
Scientists use microscopes to research vaccines; an image of a cancer cell being attacked by the immune system (inset). The new cancer vaccine is said to use personalized genetic information to help immune systems identify and attack cancer cells.
Godji10 / wildpixel/iStock / Getty Images Plus / Canva
The Russian Ministry of Health’s announcement, first publicized on December 15 by Russian state-owned news agency TASS, said that the vaccine was against “cancer,” but Mills said this wording raised questions.
“I think what doesn’t make sense is a vaccine for cancer—as we all know there are multiple cancers,” said Mills. “So, is this a universal vaccine for all cancers? I’d be very skeptical of that. I think it couldn’t be.
“I don’t think even the Russians would claim that they have a vaccine to treat all cancers.
“What is the cancer? What is the antigen? Where is the clinical trial data? These are all unanswered questions, and we haven’t seen any of this data to make a proper assessment of it.”
The alleged Russian breakthrough is said to be an mRNA vaccine used as a personalized treatment against cancer, helping the body’s immune system to recognize cancerous cells as invasive.
This sort of treatment—mRNA vaccines used as a treatment against certain cancers—is currently the subject of hundreds of clinical trials all over the world, the scientists said, revolutionized by research pursuing COVID vaccines during the pandemic.
Jenkinson said: “mRNA vaccines work by making cells in the body produce a foreign protein.
“These proteins are recognized by the immune system and it produces an immune response that kills any cells that produce these foreign proteins.
“As a personalized vaccine, it is likely that the tumor from the individual is analyzed first to see what proteins are mutated and mRNA is made to these. As such, the treatment is likely to be different for each individual.”
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