Vaccines against cancer could become a reality “before 2030”

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BioNTech/Pfizer is putting all its hopes in mRNA technology, which was also used to develop CoV vaccines.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death – in both men and women. While some cancers now have a good prognosis – if detected early enough – others remain deadly. Scientists have long dreamed of a vaccine that would prevent cancer from occurring in the first place. This dream could become a reality in a few years.

The team behind BioNTech/Pfizer’s Covid vaccine believes cancer vaccines could be available to patients by 2030 at the latest. The development of the Covid vaccine has spurred their work on a cancer vaccine, say professors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci. Tureci told the BBC, “We have learned how to make vaccines better and faster and how the immune system reacts. This will speed up our cancer vaccine as well.”

The Covid 19 vaccine’s mRNA technology would be necessary for the new cancer vaccine because it could boost the body’s immune system while attacking cancer cells. The mRNA vaccine replicates antigens that tell the body what to look for and what to shoot to prevent disease. In this case, cancer antigens distinguish cancer cells from normal cells.

When asked when cancer vaccines might be available, Ugur Sahin estimates that it could be “before 2030.” Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci founded BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, in 2008 and pioneered the development of cancer immunotherapies tailored to individual patients.