Vaccines once morest cancer and once morest vascular diseases by 2023. What seemed completely unexpected only a few years ago is on the way to becoming reality, thanks to the development of messenger RNA technology.
According to experts from two renowned pharmacological companies interviewed by our colleagues at the Guardian (Source 1), several serious diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases, should soon benefit from mRNA vaccines. Believing that 15 years of progress was “unrolled” in 12 to 18 months Due to the Covid pandemic, Dr. Paul Burton, chief medical officer of Moderna, a biotech company now known for its Sars-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine, said Moderna should be able to roll out its technology for “ all kinds of disease areas in barely 5 years. “ I think we will be able to offer personalized cancer vaccines once morest several different types of tumors to people around the world “, detailed Dr. Burton, full of enthusiasm. The doctor also assured that the mRNA might soon lead to therapies to treat rare diseases and so far untreatable.
Remember that, in the context of Sars-CoV-2, messenger RNA technology consists of injecting, not a “diminished” or inactivated virus, but a fragment of mRNA from the virus, so that it leads to the production of the Spike protein, present on the envelope of the virus. The immune system then recognizes this protein as an aggressor and produces antibodies accordingly. In the context of cancer, the goal is to target certain proteins in order to make the immune system react so that it specifically attacks cancerous cells and not healthy cells.
The pharmaceutical company Novavaxwho proposed a alternative to mRNA vaccines with a vaccine using the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 combined with an adjuvant, is also very confident and enthusiastic for the future. At the Guardian, Dr. Filip Dubovsky, president of research and development at Novavax, also shared a “ massive acceleration, not only of traditional vaccine technologies, but also of new technologies that had not yet been submitted for licensure. Certainly, mRNA falls into this category, as does [le vaccin de Novavax] ».
The fear of a decrease in both interest and funding
The various experts interviewed by the British daily, however, warn of the risk that this technological and medical acceleration will be lost due to lack of investment and/or a decline in interest in this progress, in particular because of the conflict currently taking place in Ukraine.
« Pandemics are as much of a threat, if not more, than a military threat because we know with certainty that they will occur […]. But we don’t invest the same amount it would cost to build a nuclear submarine. “, thus regretted Prof. Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chairman of the United Kingdom’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), who hopes that this post-Covid momentum will not run out of steam anytime soon despite the conjuncture.