Personalised mRNA cancer vaccines
Personalised mRNA cancer vaccines are still in development. They are designed to teach and activate the body’s immune system to recognise, hunt down and attack cancer cells.
Cancer vaccines are a class of immunotherapy that is still in development. No cancer vaccines are currently licenced for use in standard cancer care - patients can only access them through clinical trials.
Unlike traditional vaccines (such as for flu or COVID-19), cancer vaccines are not designed to prevent the disease. They are being designed and tested as a potential new way to treat cancer.
mRNA vaccines
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine was the first ever mRNA vaccine to be licenced.
The COVID-19 vaccine enables recipients to make a protein found on the virus. This teaches the immune system to recognise the virus so it can mount an attack more rapidly if infection occurs.
DNA is often described as the body’s instruction manual. That’s true – DNA contains the genetic code for all the different proteins our cells must make for our bodies to grow and function.
However, DNA is inaccessible and unreadable to the cell’s protein-making machinery.
So, to make a protein, DNA code is first turned into a portable, readable, format. This is called mRNA.
mRNA then carries the instructions needed to make the protein to the cell’s machinery.
If scientists know the exact structure of a protein, they can now engineer the mRNA that would be needed by cells to make it.
mRNA cancer vaccines
mRNA cancer vaccine candidates are designed to teach the immune system to recognise unique proteins on the surface of cancer cells. These are called tumour antigens.
Any medicine that is described as ‘candidate’ or ‘investigational’ means it is still in development and not approved for use outside clinical trials.
mRNAs coding for these antigens are created in the lab and then administered to the patient via injection or infusion.
They enter the patient’s cells, where the cancer antigens are made according to the mRNA instructions and released into the bloodstream.
This influx of antigens aims to activate the immune system, teaching it to recognise cancer as an invader and mount an attack.
Personalised to patients
For some of BioNTech’s mRNA cancer vaccine candidates, all patients receive the same study drug, which features antigens commonly found on their type of cancer.
Others are designed and made individually for each patient. They target antigens found by analysis of the patient’s unique tumour.
