[CoastalCoder]

I'm guessing that this vaccine is only used post-diagnosis.

Anyone know if there's talk of using this profilactically, like the HPV vaccine? (I realize that viruses != cancers, but IIUC hpv can sometimes lead to cancer, which is why I thought to ask.)

[sbelskie]

“The vaccine is custom-built based on an analysis of a patient's tumors after surgical removal. The vaccines are designed to train the immune system to recognize and attack specific mutations in cancer cells.”

Looks like their is a level of personalization going on that requires actual existing cancer.

[packetlost]

Damn, I knew mRNA vaccines were the pretty much the end game for vaccines, but holy shit this is cool.

[DiscourseFan]

Well, not really, what (mass) mRNA trials have shown is that they don't deliver long term immunity, and each time you give someone an mRNA booster the immune reaction gets more severe, until the point at which it might give them serious long term side effects or even, in severe cases, kill them. It doesn't actually make sense in most cases to use mRNA over traditional vaccines--but they have been producing fascinating non-prophylactic immunotherapy treatments with mRNA, where triggering a severe, and specific, immune response would lead to positive results (like with specifically targeted cancer treatments).

[Spooky23]

As someone who just lost the love of my life to complications of metastatic melanoma, I’d encourage you to tune out the naysayers and nonsense around these treatments.

Melanoma in particular heads to the brain often and is difficult to treat. 10-15 years ago, it was a death sentence. Today, 60-70% of qualified patients will survive 5 years or more thanks to immunotherapy. A chunk of the 30-40% are folks who have difficulty tolerating the therapy, have poor response, or other complications. In my wife’s case, complications from brain surgery delayed treatment and the combo of mets and immunotherapy response created a bad situation.

Today, about 50% of melanoma tumors have a BRAF mutation, and a medication that can delay growth and buy patients time to get better in order to get treatment. In my wife’s case, that wasn’t an option.

COVID demonstrated that these vaccines bend the death curve, reduce severity and offer positive immune response. If that were available early this year, the chances are my wife would be alive, finishing her second course of immunotherapy.

[mikeyouse]

I'm unfamiliar with anything in this line of research -- the Covid mRNA vaccines haven't provided longer-term immunity, but that's not at all due to the mRNA, but due to the nature of coronaviruses, how quickly they mutate and how many different mechanisms they have for cell entry. "Traditional" vaccines were actually performing worse for Covid19.

I'd be curious to read more about long-term immunity issues if you have some links?

[JAlexoid]

Way before we had COVID bring out mRNA based vaccination to mass media, I learned about mRNA as a treatment for various cancers.

Moderna's research pipeline has been full of cancer medications, which seem to be very promising.

[SamBam]

Do your statements have any sources? And are those sources anything other than the difficulty in targeting the fast-evolving covid virus?

[FpUser]

Sounds very unaffordable for general public. Hopefully I am mistaken.

[kstrauser]

Everything's unaffordable at first. It only gets better when enough people are using it that we get economies of scale.

[mrguyorama]

Which is why modern insulin is super cheap to the end user right?

[ksenzee]

It is, in countries that negotiate price. The US is doing the equivalent of walking into a market where everyone else is negotiating, and taking the vendor’s first sky-high offer.

[blackbear_]

Cancer is a bit more difficult due to its high mutation rate, but yes people are thinking at that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8525885/