Production planned until 2030
Moderna is developing a cancer vaccine
04/08/2023, 10:30 p.m
Research on cancer vaccines is in full swing worldwide. In addition to the Mainz-based biotechnology company Biontech, the US company Moderna is also working on such a drug. The corona pandemic has significantly accelerated development – the vaccine could be on the market in a few years.
The US biotechnology company Moderna plans to develop vaccines that are also effective against cancer by 2030. This was explained by Paul Burton, the company’s medical director, in an interview with the “Guardian”. Accordingly, the company is researching vaccines against various types of tumors. “I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines to people around the world,” Burton said. Moderna will save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.
The vaccines should not only work against cancer, but also against heart, circulatory, autoimmune diseases and other diseases, he continued. The company also wants to develop a vaccine that covers multiple respiratory infections with a single injection. People at risk could thus be protected against Covid, influenza and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The basis for the vaccine should be the mRNA therapy, with which the company has already developed the corona vaccine. This technique teaches the body’s cells how to make a protein that triggers the body’s immune response against disease. Burton told the newspaper that he is confident that it will be possible to treat rare diseases using mRNA therapies in the next few years. “I think we’re getting closer to a world where you can identify the genetic cause of a disease, cut it out and repair it with mRNA technology,” the scientist told the newspaper.
Pandemic accelerated research
The studies being conducted by Moderna in this area have shown promise, according to Burton. For example, the vaccine developed against RSV has shown over 80 percent effectiveness against at least two symptoms such as cough and fever in over 60-year-olds. The medical supervisory authority in the USA has given the company breakthrough therapy status for this – against this background, official testing of the vaccine is being accelerated. The company’s experimental vaccine against skin cancer received the same status in February.
Research on mRNA therapies has been significantly accelerated by the pandemic and the development of corona vaccines, Burton explained. The company also increased its production capacities during the corona pandemic. It is now easily possible to “quickly produce large quantities of vaccine”, according to the scientist. However, this accelerated progress in the field of mRNA research would have been “in vain” if the high investments of the past few years would be reduced, scientists explain in the “Guardian”.
The biotechnology company Biontech is also researching an mRNA-based cancer vaccine. Clinical studies on thousands of patients in Great Britain are to begin this year, the Mainz-based company explained a few weeks ago in the “Spiegel”.