The first tests of the Russian universal vaccine against all types of cancer were carried out on mice and showed good results.
Once the technology is developed, the corresponding drug will be created individually for patients with tumors, reported Alexander Guíntsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which is being held here. days.
According to the director of the Gamaleya center, the vaccine was developed over the last seven months, in collaboration with several Russian cancer centers, and financed by the national government, RT reported.
Russian cancer vaccine works successfully in micehttps://t.co/Pyoe7tyz4P
- RT in Spanish (@ActualidadRT) June 6, 2024
It is a therapeutic vaccine that will be administered to cancer patients, reported the Russian Gamaleya center, which developed the Sputnik V vaccine.
The vaccine will not be preventive but therapeutic
It is a therapeutic and not a preventive vaccine, which will be administered to cancer patients, based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, used in vaccines against COVID, said the expert when interviewed by Gazeta.ru and reviewed by Actualidad. RT..
"Preventive vaccines are necessary for healthy people, and in this case mRNA technologies work less well, as they produce more side effects. But if a person is already sick and fighting cancer, the benefits of mRNA technology outweigh these side effects," the scientist explained.
Personalized vaccines, adapted to the individual
"From tumor biopsies, we will determine which mutations have occurred there and, based on these mutations, using original national programs, which are currently being developed, to reconstruct the mRNA design that will encode the peptides necessary to teach the immune system to respond to the tumor," explained Guíntsburg.
At the moment, the procedure to determine the type of vaccine will last about a month, a period that is too long according to the scientist, and he noted that his team is working to reduce this period significantly.
The experimental vaccine is already working in mice. “We are testing the vaccine in mice inoculated with melanoma. On day 15, which is when the immune system starts working, we saw a big difference in tumor size between vaccinated and unvaccinated animals,” said Guintsburg.
