The development of the coronavirus vaccine has given pharmaceutical companies the necessary knowledge and technique to begin to consider challenges that have not advanced for decades. The cancer vaccine is the great goal of medicine.
Modern, company responsible for the most effective vaccine against coronavirus to datehas announced three new vaccines in development. The goal is to end: herpes simplex, varicella-zoster and cancer.
In early 2020, when the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 rapidly spread around the world triggering a global pandemic, mRNA vaccine researchers launched.
Fortunately, decades of work had made this new technology ready to take the leap in a big way, and by the end of the year, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were demonstrating extraordinary safety and efficacy (Pfizer and Moderna exceeded 90% efficacy).
Through the mRNA, modern wants expand its catalog of vaccines, joining these three new objectives those already announced by the company on: HIV, influenza, cytomegalovirus (CMV), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).
The most difficult objective for Moderna is going to be to create the vaccine against cancer. This targets two antigens expressed by some cancer cells. The vaccine targets two antigens: indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1).
Both molecules are known to be involved in the growth of tumor cells. The goal of an mRNA cancer vaccine would be to train the body’s immune cells to detect tumor cells that express these specific antigens.
The mRNA vaccine will initially be tested in advanced or metastatic skin cancer and a type of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer.
As for the other two vaccines, herpes type HSV-1 is believed to have infected more than half of the world’s population, while HSV-2 is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world, with around 10% of people thought to be infected.
The second mRNA target announced by Moderna is directed at the varicella-zoster virus (VSV). This is the virus that causes chickenpox and it is also a latent virus that can lie dormant for years. after an initial infection.