(Taiwan English News / Lin Yuwen Comprehensive report) Co-founders of German company BioNTech, Ozlem Tureci and Uğur Şahin, said recently that they have used mRNA technology to develop new cancer treatments, predicting that “maybe before 2030. officially launched”.
According to the British media BBC, Lei Qi and Wu Shaxin, the promoters behind the success of the new crown pneumonia vaccine BioNTech, are a couple of scientists. They had already started trials related to mRNA technology for the treatment of cancer before the start of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, but they were not sure regarding the mRNA technology at that time. After the successful launch of the BNT vaccine, they are more convinced that this is the right path, and they hope to launch a cancer vaccine as soon as 2030.
Lei Qi and Wu Shaxin say the mRNA technology they are working on involves producing antigens or proteins that work by sending instructions, or blueprints, to cells.
In Covid-19 treatment, this antigen is part of the virus’s spike protein, and in cancer treatment, it is a marker on the surface of tumor cells, which will teach the immune system to recognize and target cancer-affected cells and destroy them .
Turezi believes that mRNA technology allows the patient’s immune system to recognize cancer cells, while also avoiding the use of targeted drugs that cause other cells to be destroyed as a result.
The BBC pointed out that many promising cancer trials have failed in the past, and this BNT experiment must be extremely cautious, and it will take several years to know whether this experiment will live up to outside expectations, but Rezi emphasized “We have many Breakthrough, we will continue to work hard.”