An 81-year-old man from Surrey became the first patient in the U.K. to receive a new “vaccine” designed to treat solid-tumor cancers, such as the skin cancer melanoma.
Therapeutic cancer vaccines act as a kind of immunotherapy, meaning they help train the immune system to fight cancer cells. They’re different from vaccines that prevent cancer, such as the HPV vaccine that’s incredibly effective at preventing cervical cancer. In the U.S., there are a handful of therapeutic cancer vaccines approved for melanoma, prostate cancer and bladder cancer.
The new vaccine being tested in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world is called mRNA-4359, according to a statement from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the institutions running the global trial. Similar to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines against COVID-19, the treatment contains a genetic molecule called mRNA. This cousin of DNA can relay instructions to the protein-building factories in cells, prompting them to churn out specific proteins.
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