A pharmaceutical giant says ground-breaking vaccines that could combat issues like heart disease and cancer could be ready 'by the end of the decade'. Moderna, one of the firms that made a Covid jab, said it is confident vaccinations for cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030.
It is a move the firm believes could save millions of lives. Studies into the vaccinations are showing "tremendous promise" with some saying 15 years' worth of medical advancement has been "unspooled" in the last 18 months, this is due to the success of the coronavirus vaccine.
Dr Paul Burton, the chief medical officer of Moderna says he thinks firms will be able to offer treatments for "all sorts of disease areas" by 2027. He says his firm is targeting different tumour types through a cancer vaccine.
Speaking to the Guardian, Dr 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 personalised cancer vaccines against multiple different tumour types to people around the world.”
These "personalised" vaccines would work by taking a biopsy of a tumour. Genetic sequencing would then be carried out to identify any mutations of the cells.
An algorithm would then be used to find out what is causing those mutations. A molecule of mRNA would then be produced that instructs cells how to make the antigens needed to trigger an immune response.
This mRNA then, once injected, mimics a protein that matches those found on tumour cells. Immune cells then collide with and destroy cancer cells carrying the same proteins.
Dr Burton added: “I think what we have learned in recent months is that if you ever thought that mRNA was just for infectious diseases, or just for Covid, the evidence now is that that’s absolutely not the case. It can be applied to all sorts of disease areas; we are in cancer, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, rare disease.
"We have studies in all of those areas and they have all shown tremendous promise."
