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Medicine

Cancer and Heart Disease Vaccines 'Ready By End of the Decade' 154

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Millions of lives could be saved by a groundbreaking set of new vaccines for a range of conditions including cancer, experts have said. A leading pharmaceutical firm said it is confident that jabs for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030. Studies into these vaccinations are also showing "tremendous promise", with some researchers saying 15 years' worth of progress has been "unspooled" in 12 to 18 months thanks to the success of the Covid jab.

Dr Paul Burton, the chief medical officer of pharmaceutical company Moderna, said he believes the firm will be able to offer such treatments for "all sorts of disease areas" in as little as five years. The firm, which created a leading coronavirus vaccine, is developing cancer vaccines that target different tumor types. Burton said: "We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines against multiple different tumor types to people around the world."

He also said that multiple respiratory infections could be covered by a single injection -- allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) -- while mRNA therapies could be available for rare diseases for which there are currently no drugs. Therapies based on mRNA work by teaching cells how to make a protein that triggers the body's immune response against disease. Burton said :"I think we will have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that were previously undruggable, and I think that 10 years from now, we will be approaching a world where you truly can identify the genetic cause of a disease and, with relative simplicity, go and edit that out and repair it using mRNA-based technology." But scientists warn that the accelerated progress, which has surged "by an order of magnitude" in the past three years, will be wasted if a high level of investment is not maintained.
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Cancer and Heart Disease Vaccines 'Ready By End of the Decade' More

Cancer and Heart Disease Vaccines 'Ready By End of the Decade'

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  • Anything that sounds too good to be true... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember when nanoscale manufacturing, home factories, the reduced work-week, Hyperloop transit were all variously five, ten or fifteen years away?

    I'll believe it when I see it.

    • A lot of things that were promised did actually turn out to be true. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Even some things people thought would be ridiculous. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      Terabyte hard drives, petaflop super computers .. these were all predicted and people were skeptical. Heck in 1900, it was predicted that median life expectancy would have increased all the way up to 50 years! Actually they did get a lot of predictions right though. Reference: https://4.bp.blogspot.c [blogspot.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Briareos ( 21163 )

      Remember when Pepperidge Farm remembered?

    • You did see it already from moderna and Pfizer.

      This is taking that technology, the ability to create nearly arbitrary proteins, to the next incremental level.

  • End of the road for the Republican party... (Score:4, Funny)

    by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Friday April 07, 2023 @11:42PM (#63434328)
    ...once all the Democrats taking vaccines start outliving the, "Don't put yer poison in me!" MAGA crowd.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 )

      It's really not as much of a political party thing as people make it out to be. Trump himself even encouraged getting the COVID shot, meanwhile large swaths of democratic voters are also refusing to get vaccinated, particularly among minorities.

      • Re:End of the road for the Republican party... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @12:32AM (#63434366)
        He was pretty weak about his recommendations and he took a lot of heat from his party making them.

        • He was brief about his recommendations. He said on national TV that he hoped everyone would get the shot that he kept saying he had helped to create (which he didn't) and that it would be a beautiful thing, and then there was massive backlash and he immediately softened his position to always mentioning that it was your choice, but he still wanted people to take it... then about three days later, he stopped talking about it except to occasionally remind leftists that he helped! At least as much as a kid who

          • What's even more interesting about this is the left-wing commentators who have been shown (by Libs of TikTok back in the day) to be dead against the Trump vaccine, only to change their minds and demand everyone be forced to take the vaccines once Biden had replaced him.

            Hilarious how the partisanship of politics is so extreme these days, and how the screeching harpies can't see their own idiocy, and how the establishment hates when anyone brings the recipts to highlight the hypocrisy.

            The vaccine itself has n

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dfghjk ( 711126 )

              "What's even more interesting about this is the left-wing commentators who have been shown (by Libs of TikTok back in the day) to be dead against the Trump vaccine, only to change their minds and demand everyone be forced to take the vaccines once Biden had replaced him."

              Not a surprising comment coming from a viewer of "Libs of TikTok".

              The vaccine was unavailable until after the election and accessible to essentially no one until after "Biden had replaced him".

              "Hilarious how the partisanship of politics is

              • the libs of tiktok, for all your hatred, was pointing this out with the simplest of simple tweets of someone's hypocrisy. Without any comment either. It was the pure light of truth shone in their face.

                And they didn't like it, just like you don't like it being a thing. Imagine powerful political and media creatures being accountable for their own words. Imagine.

          • He was brief about his recommendations. He said on national TV that he hoped everyone would get the shot that he kept saying he had helped to create (which he didn't)

            He might be referring to this:

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

            In which his administration directly played a role. The TL;DR of that program was that multiple proposed vaccines were given aggressive funding and expedited testing in parallel, in the hopes that at least one of them would work. And as it turned out, two of them did.

            That alone is probably why the US had not one but two working vaccines before the rest of the world did. I still remember right here on slashdot some Europeans were complaining that

      • Re:End of the road for the Republican party... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @12:57AM (#63434398)

        Trump told people to get vaccinated and was booed for it. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/a... [nbcnews.com]

        As for “large swaths” we’re going to need some real numbers on that claim.

      • I think its a little more complicated than left or right people. Right wing politicians *absolutely* seemed to be stoking antivaxer nonsense, but I suspect amongst the voter base it was a bit more complex witih the "MAGA" extremes of the right wing getting into the horse paste and "vaccines cause 5G wifi autism", but also the stupid hippy new-age faction of the left fell for it, and then a bizare syncretic alliance formed that let a lot of those fall under the influence of those right wing politicians. In t

      • >"It's really not as much of a political party thing as people make it out to be"

        For some people, EVERYTHING is a political party thing. That is very apparent on Slashdot. It also reveals very narrow and disingenuous prejudice thinking not only by those posting such stuff, but modding it up. And then we wonder about the increasing "polarization" of the country. Hmmm.

    • ...once all the Democrats taking vaccines start outliving the, "Don't put yer poison in me!" MAGA crowd.

      As the one vaccinated Republican, I was wondering that myself. Then every state will be a blue state and we'll all be shot by crazed catch-and-release carjackers.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by real_nickname ( 6922224 )
      It's already the case, democrats use babies tears to live longer. I think I read this in Nature or something like that. I will ask Melon Tusk for confirmation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      One can hope the morons will do that, but they will probably just produce even more offspring.

    • ...once all the Democrats taking vaccines start outliving the, "Don't put yer poison in me!" MAGA crowd.

      That's why the MAGAts are trying to ban abortion and birth control, and legalize child brides [newsweek.com]. They need to breed more MAGAts, and they're willing to rape children to do it. And as always, they accused the left of doing what they were going to do before they did it [reuters.com], in order to poison the well. (I actually got a bunch of stuff about CA SB145 [ca.gov] and had to use -california in my terms, because of more fake news-related FUD coming up in my search around that.)

    • ...once all the Democrats taking vaccines start outliving the, "Don't put yer poison in me!" MAGA crowd.

      One of the advantages of being an old guy is that I've been watching your team say stuff like this, decade after decade ... and yet, your political opponents still refuse to die off, cussed buggers that they are.

      It's almost as though there is some flaw in your thinking about this.

      • I remember a report that said because young people typically vote for leftwing parties and are generally more left wing in outlook, as the demographic ages the political landscape will become increasingly left wing to the point where right wing parties will cease to exist.

        You'd think this was obviouse. Except the report was written in the 1960s.

        Damn kids, keep growing up and seeing their first tax bill.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          Kids growing up today aren't seeing big tax bills because they aren't accumulating wealth.

          People don't get more conservative as they get older, they get more conservative as they get richer.

          "Except the report was written in the 1960s."

          And you've learned nothing since then.

          • you know nothing then. The report in the 60s showed that common perceptions are wrong.

            Kids don't have to get richer, they just have to get a job and see their tax bill. And they will, because we cannot have 100% of the population on benefits. Its not about wealth, its that tax bill.

            And maybe its not even that, it'll be that they see the closed shops and crime and will move to a red state, and there they'll be exposed to people outside their old groups and will recover from the "woke mind virus".

      • I'm amazed that everyone that replied to my post thought I was somehow serious about this. Yours takes the cake for thinking I was actually making some sort of prediction, or that I have a 'team' that I am rooting for. My dream is that both the Republican and Democratic parties go fall in a deep, deep hole together and are never heard from again. Both sides have slowly sunk into insanity.

  • Vaccine Against heart disease? (Score:3, Informative)

    by javaman235 ( 461502 ) on Friday April 07, 2023 @11:47PM (#63434334)

    Ok, I get immunotherapy vaccine against cancer: sequence the tumor, pinpoint the genetic mutations with sequencing, put it in a custom vaccine to train immune system to attack tumor. But heart disease? How do we vaccinate against junk food, smoking and sedentary lifestyle?

    • Probably because those aren't the only things that cause cardiovascular disease. The one that puzzles me is how they'd protect against autoimmune diseases. But at the same time, "training" the immune system isn't entirely new either, some research groups had limited success doing that with transplant patients in order to eliminate the need for anti-rejection drugs, though not by using anything mRNA related, rather with some sort of partial bone marrow graft.

    • You're so close (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      Steve Jobs was a vegetarian and exercised a lot is dead and Steve Wozniak who lives off by his own admission pizza and milkshakes is still kicking... Think about it

      • Neither Pizza no Milkshakes are particularly bad food.

        You ofc can find examples unhealthy milkshakes I guess, same for pizza. But in genera there is nothing wrong with any of them.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is called statistics.

      • Re:You're so close (Score:4, Insightful)

        by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @11:14AM (#63434988)

        Are you trying to make a joke? I ask because there's nothing to think about here.

        Of course it's possible to eat a shit diet and live a long time just like it's possible to live to 100 while smoking tobacco. That doesn't mean you aren't stacking the deck against yourself by doing either thing.

        Meanwhile people leading healthy lifestyles can sometimes get a random ailment that kills them but that does not at all change the fact that eating a shit diet will very likely shorten your life.

        • Re:You're so close (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @12:22PM (#63435082)

          The overwhelming majority of people have next to no understanding of statistics and probability, and are very bad at making risk / reward assessments.

          They're also stunningly unaware of this deficit and have complete confidence in their ability to make such assessments.

      • Don't forget to factor in the stress levels and sleep patters of those two lifestyles too.

    • As someone with congenitally hugh cholesterol but who has been some form of competitive athlete for half my life, I can tell you that those things arenâ(TM)t all that cause heart disease. Iâ(TM)m on a statin now, and it works where training as a cyclist and a swimmer didnâ(TM)t.

      I donâ(TM)t know how it would work, but presumably those are the sorts of factors theyâ(TM)re looking at. A vaccine for high cholesterol, or atypically high blood pressure. Things that are already treatable b

    • Re:Vaccine Against heart disease? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @01:22AM (#63434416)

      Heart disease is caused by atheriosclerosis, which in turn is the result of failures of the immune system. Let me explain: The mechanism is as follows, LDL cholesterol is carried around in the blood by a protein called ApoB, it sometimes sneaks into the artiery wall forming a lesion. The lesion gets worse because the immune system through a complex set of interactions that involve [the immune system] macrophages and CD4 T-cells (somewhat rightfully) thinking the ApoB LDL complex is an enemy. The issue is that the immune system responds with a type of molecule that actually causes the ApoB-LDL to get stuck there (turns the LDL into oxLDL etc.) and then if that's not enough .. through a serious of misteps causes other LDL molecules and other crap to accumulate there. This accumulation occurs over time, until one fine day .. the lesion just gets too big and ruptures. When it ruptures all hell breaks lose as the body tries to "repair" and patch up the injury .. resulting in a blockage. Anyway TL;DNR.. One way a heart disease vaccine can work is to make the immune system ignore the ApoB instead of attack it (a tolerizing vaccine). Another way is to reprogram macrophages to actually clean up the LDL buildup instead of fucking shit up. It's fairly complicated to explain in a slashdot comment but I dumbed it down and left out a few things. There are also other approaches not worth typing out.

      • I think you did an excellent job of explaining the situation clearly and concisely.

      • Heart disease is caused by atheriosclerosis

         

        ONE form of heart disease is caused by the constriction of cardiac arteries from diet and lifestyle. There are many other ways to break a heart (pun intended). Some are congenital (ie. WPW), others are idiosyncratic. A vaccine will fix few of these.

      • Fun fact for those reading, but without the scientific detail and hopefully accurate from memory, I believe the artery walls have proton pumps that create acid to clear away these proteins. If you are taking a PPI like Prilosec, you are affecting these proton pumps the same way as the ones in your stomach that produce stomach acid.

        It's best to get at the root cause of excess stomach acid rather than rely on a PPI long-term as it can worsen your chances for heart disease. In my case, it was sleep apnea. B

        • Taking care of sleap apnea is very important, but the leading cause of what you might think of as "stomach acid" .. actually the disease is GERD (gastroephageal reflux disease) .. is likely obesity. The biggest problem with PPIs is that they don't actually adress the cause of acid reflux disease. Acid reflux is typically caused by a problem with the lower esophageal sphincter (the valve between the esophagus and the stomach) .. the leaky valve results in stomach acid moving into the esophagus. Instead of ad

          • Treating the apnea made a 100% turnaround for me. Zero remaining symptoms.

            Lowering pH in the stomach is not a big problem, but inhibiting proton pumps elsewhere in the body is a problem.

      • .. the lesion just gets too big and ruptures. When it ruptures all hell breaks lose as the body tries to "repair" and patch up the injury .. resulting in a blockage.

        You could add a few words here about the role of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. That blockage could just not happen.

  • screw that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @03:01AM (#63434510) Journal
    They really need to focus on vaccines for bacteria. We have not been doing the R&D on antibiotics and are now running out of these.
    Few ppl in society, and even fewer on /., have seen ppl die or suffer from various bacteria and virus. What ppl saw with covid was just a small taste of what society is about to have come back. For the last 50+ years, the world has had it good by having a large number of different antibiotics, and by America doing loads of basic R&D. However, reagan moved a great deal of the civilian stuff to Darpa, and W then killed the basic R&D under DARPA and moved it to basically weapons for his friends companies. So, for the last 20 years, we have not been moving forwards with antibiotics and we are now seeing a number of super bugs developing: MRSA is just one of a number. A solved issue was gonorrhea, but it is now joining Syphilis, Chlamydia and Mycoplasma as being antibiotic resistant.

    So many youths scream about pronouns, and shortly, they will be screaming that they have to pee all the time, or that their brain is being fried in 20 years.
    • I can't keep up with the growing list of unavoidable things that will kill people and destroy civilization in the coming years. AI, diseases, war, energy, climate change, volcanoes, demography... Doomers seem to be prevalent everywhere nowadays, even if they happen to be right, they are useless and just contribute to anxiety, panic and self-fulfilling prophecies.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      They really need to focus on vaccines for bacteria. We have not been doing the R&D on antibiotics and are now running out of these.

      Errr. No. Firstly we have and continue to do R&D on antibiotics. Secondly we're not "running out", the standard antibiotics still address the overwhelming majority of ailments we have. Thirdly highly resistant bacteria that do survive what we throw at them kill orders of magnitude fewer people than heart disease or cancer, and is getting an appropriate amount of R&D support.

      So many youths scream about pronouns

      Why do you take away all credibility for yourself when discussing a serious topic?

    • They really need to focus on vaccines for bacteria.

      I seem to recall about ten years ago that someone came up with a vaccine to prevent cavities in teeth. I don't think anything came of it. There are only a few bacteria that cause cavities, so this might be one thing to look at. Additionally, stomach ulcers seem to be exclusively associated with a specific bacteria (H. Pylorum). Although antibiotics are good at fixing this, bacteria can develop resistance over time. It's hard to develop a resistance to a vaccine.

  • Better than placebo this time (Score:3)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @03:52AM (#63434568)
    We promise, with experience from the wildly successful MRNA Covid vaxes, the cancer vaxes will totally work better than placebo.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @04:59AM (#63434590)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ...I can continue eating lard and read meat?

  • There has been a cure for cancer "just around the corner" for the last 80 years. Every week in the media there is this groundbreaking research that promises cure for cancer. This is not happening ever. There will never be a cure for cancer in the foreseeable future.

  • Why is a Guardian post news for techies?

  • He also said that multiple respiratory infections could be covered by a single injection -- allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)

    Just like they promised for covid?

  • https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

    It was a very small trial of a therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine.

    In fairness it takes pretty spectacular results to achieve statistical significance when N=15.

    (Show that paper to anyone telling you mRNA vaccines are too novel to be trusted).

    Will it be different now? A lot has changed. We have machine learning to generate just the right sequence. We have field-proven lipid coats (Dr. McLachlan, you deserve statues).

  • If past performance insures future realization, this will never happen!
    Since the later part of the 1900's, articles like these have been saying that we are within 5 years of curing Hair Loss, Cancer, Halitosis, Heart Disease, the USPS, Diabetes, the Common Cold, the Flu, Sleep Apnea, etc., etc.
    NOTHING has happened!
    Odds are that nothing will happen by the end of this decades. Or the next. Or the one following that.

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