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Medicine

Scientist Behind COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Says Her Team's Next Target Is Cancer (www.cbc.ca) 109

Posted by BeauHD from the based-on-mRNA dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and that the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge -- cancer. Ozlem Tureci, who founded the German company BioNTech with her husband, Ugur Sahin, was working on a way to harness the body's immune system to tackle tumors when they learned last year of an unknown virus infecting people in China. Over breakfast, the couple decided to apply the technology they'd been researching for two decades to the new threat.

Britain authorized BioNTech's mRNA vaccine for use in December, followed a week later by Canada. Dozens of other countries, including the U.S., have followed suit and tens of millions of people worldwide have since received the shot developed together with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. [...] As BioNTech's profile has grown during the pandemic, so has its value, adding much-needed funds the company will be able to use to pursue its original goal of developing a new tool against cancer. The vaccine made by BioNTech-Pfizer and U.S. rival Moderna uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions into the human body for making proteins that prime it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumors.

"We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA," said Tureci. Asked when such a therapy might be available, Tureci said "that's very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that within only a couple of years, we will also have our vaccines [against] cancer at a place where we can offer them to people." For now, Tureci and Sahin are trying to ensure the vaccines governments have ordered are delivered and that the shots respond effectively to any new mutation in the virus.
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Scientist Behind COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Says Her Team's Next Target Is Cancer More

Scientist Behind COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Says Her Team's Next Target Is Cancer

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  • Good luck with that (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cancer is not a monolithic thing.

    • Re: Good luck with that (Score:4, Funny)

      by EirikFinlay ( 6179140 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @07:27PM (#61177752)

      I'm sure they know this.

    • That was the target of all the research. The amazing techniques that allow them to get a bit of modified RNA into a cell and have it produce a protein of choice.

      Then, when Covid-19 unexpectedly came along, they just applied that to the production of the spike protein.

      The vaccine is the icing on the cake. The cake was baked for the much more difficult problem of cancer.

      • Congratulations on summarizing the summary (apparently without reading it).

      • The vaccine is the icing on the cake. The cake was baked for the much more difficult problem of cancer.

        Last time I checked covid is still one of the main problem of the world and cancer too. I'm not sure anything is baked yet.

    • Thats kind of the whole point of these things.

      If there was only one sort of cancer thats behind all the death and misery of that wretched disease, we probably would have solved it in the 1960s, 1980s at the latest.

      The problem of course is that cancer is made out of people. its our own cells going haywire , and usually through fairly unique mutations.

      And so thats where the new wave of therapies focuses, attenuating cancers based on individualized therapies. Looking at the specific genetic changes, building c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      Exactly. They can produce, in theory, a vaccine that is tailored to YOUR specific cancer if they can find a unique signature to target.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      No, like COVID, it's a $$kerchingggg$$ thing, researcher is grabbing for the big grants, why this is news I don't know.

  • It occurs to be that it may be a better idea to go after an array of highly prevalent viruses like Human papillomavirus (HPV) and other soft targets before taking on something as diverse as cancer. However, it may merely be a selfish decision in that if she lives long enough then she is certain to develop cancer. In all cases, I hope she succeeds and I'm glad she isn't a super-villain.

    • It occurs to be that it may be a better idea to go after an array of highly prevalent viruses like Human papillomavirus (HPV) and other soft targets before taking on something as diverse as cancer. However, it may merely be a selfish decision in that if she lives long enough then she is certain to develop cancer. In all cases, I hope she succeeds and I'm glad she isn't a super-villain.

      There is already a vaccine for HPV, which frequently leads to various cancers. It is best given in the early teens, so it is up to parents to decide if their kids get it or not.

      It is as close to the perfect example of Darwinism as we have in the vaccine world.

      • There is already a vaccine for HPV

        There are more than 150 types/strains of HPV while the current vaccine protects only against nine types (HPV types 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58). There is still much work to be done to eliminate HPV.

        • I'm not sure we need to eliminate HPV, or that it is even possible. Vaccines protect against the handful of variants that cause by far the most cancers. Yes, there are many others, but diminishing returns make it unlikely there will be a drive to target those. A case can certainly be made that those resources are probably better directed elsewhere.

          • Yes, there are many others, but diminishing returns make it unlikely there will be a drive to target those.

            Unless there's some targetable conserved region on some HPV antigen that is common to the family.

            Virus surface proteins generally have some section that doesn't change much because it's the part that does the work and has to be approximately the way it is to do its job, while the structural bulk of it gets to change a lot to provide a moving target to the immune system, letting variants infect hosts wh

      • Clarification :

        There is already a vaccine for HPV, which frequently leads to various cancers.

        The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) has strong causative and correlation associations with a variety of cancers. Disregarding the lunatic fringe of anti-vaxxers and "my teenage daughter will never have sex except with her one and only husband" god-squaddies, I've heard of no claims that the HPV vaccine has a significant causative association with any cancer.

        I know what you mean, but it could have been read in the wrong

        • Yeah, after I clicked post I realized I did not word that very well. Hopefully most people still know what I meant. The ones who don't are probably a lost cause anyway.

    • You obviously know nothing about mRNA vaccines. Cancer is the original target, and in fact it is highly suitable for cancer. The mRNA vaccine is made specific to an individuals cancer. A persons cancer genome is decoded (sequenced), and the vaccine is generated based on that.

      • You obviously know nothing about mRNA vaccines.

        Well, you're not wrong.

      • How does the mRNA get into the cellular enzymes where it can actually do something? This is like putting DVDs on top of your laptop and expecting them to be installed somehow. Plus, what is the eventual disposition of the mRNA? Is it going to be floating around in your system for decades like the cancer-causing Simian virus No.40 that was spread to millions thanks to US polio vaccines?

        • Re: Maybe. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Goldsmith ( 561202 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @10:39PM (#61178248)

          I'm a scientist, I'm going to try to answer this in the spirit that you're actually interested and not just another person who cares about the action of asking the questions more than learning the answers. Your questions are all reasonable!

          How does the mRNA get into the cellular enzymes where it can actually do something?

          It gets into the cell by being packaged in a special liposome shell. In scientific literature, we typically call the naturally occurring versions of these shells vesicles. What we've done with mRNA vaccines is we have borrowed the system by which our cells communicate mRNA with each other and we're sending our own manufactured mRNA messages. mRNA, by the way, stands for messenger RNA. It's a message. Although most mRNA stays in the cell that originated it, a lot of mRNA is moving from cell to cell in your body right now. You may be reading about links to mRNA and cancer. We learned about using vesicles to transfer external mRNA into cells in large part by studying cancer, but the messaging system is there and working fine in normal healthy cells as well. A lot of mRNA vaccine technology was developed as a prototype cancer therapy, and quickly repurposed for covid before any cancer therapy was finished.

          This is like putting DVDs on top of your laptop and expecting them to be installed somehow.

          Rather, this is like discovering that the DVD player manufacturers built a robot to test their hardware by inserting DVDs and using that robot to insert DVDs for us so that we don't have to do it by hand.

          Plus, what is the eventual disposition of the mRNA?

          You are right now producing a lot of mRNA. Just like your naturally produced mRNA, injected mRNA will be degraded over time by the cells that use it (or may be destroyed by your immune system while the vaccine trains your immune system to attack viral proteins). The liposome that carries the mRNA falls apart quickly - a few hours. It is that liposome shell that necessitates the extreme storage conditions for the vaccine. The mRNA itself has a lifetime of a few days.

          Is it going to be floating around in your system for decades like the cancer-causing Simian virus No.40 that was spread to millions thanks to US polio vaccines?

          An interesting question. This is a real thing that happened: a virus infected the polio vaccine developed by Salk and that virus led to a significant global increase in cancer rates. In that case, the vaccine contained an active virus as a contaminant that replicated inside people, it wasn't intended to be there. It would be dishonest to suggest that such a mistake could never happen again, it could. In this case, the mRNA vaccines are synthetic. That means that they're not the result of growing anything (like almost all past vaccines), they are manufactured via a chemical process. This should drastically reduce the opportunity for any biological organism or virus to infect and contaminate the vaccine. In addition, our ability to test for infecting viruses is MUCH better today than it was 70 years ago.

          • Browsing Slashdot today was worth it for this comment alone.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Uecker ( 1842596 )

            An interesting question. This is a real thing that happened: a virus infected the polio vaccine developed by Salk and that virus led to a significant global increase in cancer rates.

            This review https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com] from 2006 concludes "In summary, the most recent evidence does not support the notion that SV40 contributed to the development of human cancers." Or is there newer evidence?

          • Polio vaccine did not cause cancer. There is no evidence to support this. https://www.skepticalraptor.co... [skepticalraptor.com] https://www.factcheck.org/2018... [factcheck.org] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

            • I think the factcheck.org link you posted is quite good. I'm a scientist, but I'm not an epidemiologist. That said, I would communicate very differently than the way the National Academy did, when presented with the same data.

              In a case like this, making a definitive statement that could reasonably interpreted by a non-scientist as "there's no link at all" or "it didn't happen" is ethically wrong. At a scientific conference, in front of an expert group of people, I would absolutely use your language, beca

        • Re: Maybe. (Score:4, Informative)

          by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @10:39PM (#61178250)

          Haha if you can get RNA to survive 2 days, let alone a decade, just floating around in the blood that's Nobel prize. RNA is either cut up by enzymes or falls apart very easily. That's why they had to invent ways to make it stick around in a cell long enough to be useful as a vaccine. That's why your cells use DNA, not RNA to store the genome. Also the mRNA vaccine doesn't need to "get into the cellular enzymes" .. it needs to get into the cell. It is carried there in a lipid particle (think of it like a cage) that helps it get inside the cell where it can do its thing.

          The SV40 contamination incident of polio vaccines happened literally 60 years ago.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          How does the mRNA get into the cellular enzymes where it can actually do something? This is like putting DVDs on top of your laptop and expecting them to be installed somehow. Plus, what is the eventual disposition of the mRNA? Is it going to be floating around in your system for decades like the cancer-causing Simian virus No.40 that was spread to millions thanks to US polio vaccines?

          mRNA vaccines are new only because the technology to make them came together only around 5 years ago. mRNA itself was resear

          • mRNA vaccines are new only because the technology to make them came together only around 5 years ago.
            Not really.
            The German "inventors" got a Nobel Prize for it around 1975.

        • Well, m stands for messenger.
          A huge deal of ordinary body functions is based on mRNA.

          The fragments are so small that they can enter a body cell. There they trigger production of antigens (the things that the immune system is looking for and makes fitting anti bodies against).

          After a few days that mRNA is gone, probably after a few hours.

          Normally: you learn that in biology, if you do not have a biology class that is 30 years outdated.

    • The articel or summary is very badly written.

      The original goal of BioNTech was: an anti corona vaccine. That is why the company got founded and why they were prepared to develop a vaccine against this particular variant so quickly: they already had 15 years research behind their back. Of course the idea to use mRNA to fight "cancer" was already prevalent 20 years ago.

      However they will tackle "some cancer" and not all kinds of cancer.

      Bottom line they aim to get approval for new approaches in therapy, not rea

      • The articel or summary is very badly written.

        The original goal of BioNTech was: an anti corona vaccine. That is why the company got founded and why they were prepared to develop a vaccine against this particular variant so quickly: they already had 15 years research behind their back.

        According to BioNTech's SEC filing: [sec.report]

        "BioNTech was founded in 2008 on the understanding that every cancer patient’s tumor is unique and that in order to effectively address this challenge, we must create individualized treatments for each patient."

        On BioNTech's "Our Vision" [biontech.de] website page, the first text you come across is:

        "We aspire to individualize cancer medicine"

        On BioNTech's "Science" [biontech.de] website page, the first text you come across is:

        "We aspire to individualize cancer medicine"

        ...along with a quote

        • Sorry, borked the link for "On BioNTech's "Science" [biontech.de] website page". Should be

          https://biontech.de/science/individualized-cancer-medicine

        • My evidence is their "story in Germany" :D

          But I was wondering already if they try to change it depending on who is asking.

          Not super important, point is they are one of the first in Europe who work on mRNA based medical procedures to boost the immune system.

          I can't find anything that says BioNTech was even looking at coronaviruses when it was founded. What is your evidence that "The original goal of BioNTech was: an anti corona vaccine"?
          That is what was in the news about a year ago.

          • But I was wondering already if they try to change it depending on who is asking.

            Here [biontech.de] is the BioNTech website section on COVID-19. Funny, I was wondering why a company whose original goal was "anti corona vaccines" makes absolutely no mention of it anywhere in their COVID section. Or anywhere else on their site that I can find.

            I would expect a company that was founded expressly for producing corona vaccines, who now has such a vaccine on the market, would be shouting to the rooftops about their long experience in that specific area. But they aren't. Are you really asking people t

            • would be shouting to the rooftops about their long experience in that specific area.
              As I said: that is what they did last year.

              The founders told that in an interview.

              • As I said: that is what they did last year.

                The founders told that in an interview.

                LOL!

                As I said: I'm looking for something besides "take my word for it".

                Your claim is "The original goal of BioNTech was: an anti corona vaccine." Apparently, you expect people to believe that a company founded by pure cancer researchers was created to focus on coronaviruses instead of cancer. I find that claim rather extraordinary. Do you know what extraordinary claims require? [wikipedia.org] (hint: they require something you haven't provided)

                Given the multiple published statements from BioNTech itself that directl

                • Sorry, no idea about what you want to argue.

                  When the two founders got interviewed when a Covd-19 vaccine was on the horizon, they told the reporter "beacause of SARS and MERS we wanted to make a company focusing on Corona vaccines" Based on mRNA and in the end tackle cancer.

                  What you want to argue is beyond me.

                  • WTF?

                    You've got to be kidding me. Is this some kind of joke? Or a pathetic troll?

                    You've made over a dozen comments in other discussions since my reply over a fucking day ago, and now you come back here with more of the same idiotic bullshit? Do you understand what it means to be "a day late and a dollar short"? Are you trying to get your fucking picture published next to the definition of that idiom?

                    My friend, I don't want to argue ANYTHING with you. I've made my points crystal clear. If you're unab

                    • Lol, why so angry? Why so ranting?

                      As I'm male, I hardly can be cunt.

                      And the one who lost something is you, as the discussion/story is obviously not close.

                    • Heh, back again? What a surprise. I guess you get off by having the shit kicked out of you on public forums. OK, I'll continue to oblige.

                      Lol, why so angry? Why so ranting?

                      I don't suffer fools gladly. On this site, I generally allow idiots like you 2-3 stupid replies before becoming annoyed. You surpassed my limit for "comments that repeat the same ludicrous shit over and over and over" some time ago.

                      Looking at your posting history, my limit looks quite a bit more generous than yours. Here's you calling someone stupid, a moron, and an [slashdot.org]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • You seem blissfully unaware (i hope) of the pain cancer causes and the fact that it affects many younger people too. We aren't going to run out of ways to die. Also, "population overgrowth" is a situation we as a species are nowhere near threatened by. And in places where it's a problem it is purely an economic problem that is solvable by resource management, better family planning, improved energy production (fusion energy for example), and space travel.

      • Solved by... space travel? How, by smacking orbital masses into populated centers?

        If you think we're ever going to ship enough people off the planet to 'somewhere else' to halt population growth, you have a stunning lack of understanding of the kind of numbers we're talking about and how expensive it is to ship mass off-planet.

        And that's assuming we managed to learn how to survive long term in space tomorrow, which we're most certainly not going to do.

        • The cost of launching a person into space with re-usable rockets 10 years from now would be about $20,000 (Elon Musk's Starship -- 100 passengers for $2 million --- $1 million for fuel, $1 million for non-fuel operating costs). Reference: https://www.space.com/spacex-s... [space.com] So long term, living in space is a viable possibility .. 75 to 200 years from now there will 100s of SpaceX style re-usable rockets. And colonies in space.

    • Your Aspergers is showing

  • I sure hope she didn't make any "racist" tweets when she was 17.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      I sure hope she didn't make any "racist" tweets when she was 17.

      Does it matter? The whacko left will find something to complain about. If all else fails, make stuff up. Doesn't seem to matter if it's true or not. Just repeat the lie enough time and sheep will believe it.

  • What a lot of people don't realize is Cancer is a catch all. There are different types of breast cancer for example. They are different than lung cancer. I happen to have experience in this area. What they can do today is a lot more than just 5 years ago. My wife had a cancer that if she came down with it in the 1980s she wouldn't be here. So far over 6 years. I have a sister that was in an old folks retirement condo. She said there are a lot of people living there with stage 4 cancer. They live for years l

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