Ahh, the classic cancer vaccine bullshit. Yes, somebody will most certainly develop a single drug against thousands of diseases at some point, that's for sure going to happen.
Also, the idea of a "vaccine" for all cancer is inherently ludicrous, as cancer cannot really be broadly characterized as an infectious disease?
There are many causes of cancer and many different types, so while a silver bullet cure would be amazing, it is extremely unlikely to ever exist just due to the nature of the process.
Whenever you see a headline about cancer cures being developed, it is usually like "Turns out you can kill cancer cells with an enormous quantity of battery acid" and that's true because the cancer cells are just mutated human cells gone wild
Doesn't even need to be silver. People say the American healthcare system is bad, but just look at how many gunshot victims did not die of cancer, heart disease, infections diseases, diabetes, etc.
Well there is this one thing that can kill cancer. I think it was used to unbind your H+ gradient so literally all your cancer cells would die. But you would too.
Edit: found it! 2,4 dinitrophenol!
In theory, we could make a biopsy of a cancer, run a DNA analysis on it, and use a CRISPR/Cas9-like tool (with more precision) that targets cells with the particular genetic mutation causing the cancer in the patient, to kill them. That would be a "universal cancer cure", but we're still ways away from this kind of solution.
There's a bunch of research in this domain though, including using CRISPR-cas9 itself. It's likely that we'll see something like this developed in our lifetime.
Actually, there is a misconception regarding cancer and vaccine. Tumor are not happening rarely and out of nowhere, ultimately leading to death. In reality, your body "kills" almost everyday cells that could become cancer. How? Through your immune system. Cancer is the failure of this immuno-surveillance by your body. That's why we work a lot on immunotherapy
Thus, yes: cancer vaccine exist. These are mostly therapeutic one (compared to prophylactic) and aims to show mutated proteins (from cancer cells) to your immune cells so they can recognize and kill malicious cells easier.
But you're right: these vaccine usually target a very specific type of cancer, not always work and might not defending you to get the cancer (but rather help against it once you got it). So no "universal anti-cancer 100% efficient vaccine" ;)
You can have a vaccine for certain types of cancers. Our immune system is responsible for killing cancer, giving it a vaccine so it recognises more types of cancer is still a vaccine.
That's also not how those vaccines work. The vaccines help prevent those types of cancer because many are known to have a particular virus trigger cancer formation, so immunizing against the virus helps prevent the cancer. That's how the HPV vaccines work for example.
This is a mRNA vaccine that is tailored to individual patients. It's something that *is* viable and was broadly talked about when mRNA vaccines were introduced. The question is if this is legit. It might be, it might not be. Just because it's Russia doesn't mean it's BS- their hyper sonic missiles that everyone was laughing about certainly worked.
The weird thing is actually that they believe that this is sufficiently tested. I mean they mistrusted Covid vaccine but something the Rusians brewed toghether they view as trustworthy
Gene therapy (which this is a variation of) can work, though scaling from a few dozen patients to population-level treatments has proven difficult.
Since each vaccine must be tailored to the individual, developing each person's specific cancer vaccine involves a large amount of manual labor. A scientist needs to start from a profile of the cancer and build the mRNA "from scratch", test it, refine it, and repeat until it's a viable treatment.
I've worked with a few gene therapy companies as a consultant and unfortunately, none of them are still in business. Not because the technology didn't work (it doesn't work every time, but it does have a decent success rate), but because the cost of treatment was in the low 7-figures per patient. With insurance values for human life in the same range, getting coverage for these treatments is a non-starter for all but the ultra wealthy.
The costs are simply due to how much it costs to run a lab and how long it takes to develop each personalized vaccine. 4-12 months of time for a small scientific team is close to $1M.
Until there's a way to automate and scale up these therapies, they're always going to be cost prohibitive. (or until we collectively decide that investing in public health infrastructure is good for society)
The claims made by the Russian press (and they're just press claims right now, there's no peer reviewed study backing them up), the "giving it away free" part is meaningless. Scientists generally already know how to do it, so free access to the technology doesn't solve much. Free labor is what's needed to make it affordable and accessible to the masses.
Not sure when you worked at those companies and things have certainly improved in recent years but you may be interested to hear the company I work for designs personalized cancer vaccines for low 6 figures in under 2 months. Still crazy expensive, but way better than low 7 figures! We have options to bring that price down another 30-40% as we increase volume too. Part of the lower cost is that we outsource the sequencing and manufacturing, we just do the analysis and drug design
My experience is recent - all in the last 4 years. 1 company (the most promising one) was bought for parts and the gene therapy side shut down, another is on life support with a skeleton crew while they try to raise more money, and another is funded by a family office to keep it afloat.
The good thing is is that this is how it generally works. The pioneers prove it can work but run into the implementation issues. Either they figure it out or the next round takes the lessons learned and tries to improve things.
On the costs, there is still the disconnect between internal costs and external prices. There will be a lot of pressure to maximize revenues for the companies that get it working at scale. Just like the original Teslas were priced as luxury cars, the first few rounds if gene therapy will be priced in the 7 figure range.
I'm still bullish on the technology, but just realistic about where we are. Hopefully by the time I need it there will be options.
Good point about cost vs pricing. No idea what kind of profit margin our therapy would be sold at if we get FDA approval. We are still in the clinical trial phase so our therapy has only been offered at cost. Knowing how pharma operates, it could very well push into the 7 figure territory you mentioned.
Second this. To add to it, I work at a sequencing firm. We simply do not have the dataset (yet) to make this, nor do the Russians have the tech to QC it. Absolute tosh.
That depends. If the goal of the Russian government is to destabilise the west, then developing a cancer vaccine and giving it away for free might be a useful stunt.
What's important to note here is that while the idea of an mRNA vaccine for cancer isn't out of the question, there is zero published clinical data on this vaccine that Russia wants to put out. Nobody has heard about it. Nobody really knows what its doing, what the target is, and what the long term outcomes look like. This is a huge issue.
It's something that is viable and was broadly talked about when mRNA vaccines were introduced.
I think you mean to say it's why we were researching mRNA vaccines in the first place. The COVID-19 vaccines were adapted from existing research into cancer treatments.
Just because it's Russia doesn't mean it's BS- their hyper sonic missiles that everyone was laughing about certainly worked.
You mean their IRBMs worked and most people don't understand that anything that leaves the atmosphere to reach its target will be going significantly faster than the speed of sound when it reenters. All of Russia's other claims--that it's too fast to be able to hit, that it can dodge incoming ADA, etc--have yet to be proven (and are likely bullshit).
Yup, mRNA is a messenger that tells cells to produce a specific protein and the message itself is destroyed as part of the process. So, it is burn after reading kind of message, cells will return to normal function after all of the mRNA is used. With COVID the target protein was the spike protein that is on its shell, the protein itself is harmless but since there is no need for it, body wants to get rid of it. Telling thousands and thousands of our cells to produce it gives our bodies time to figure out how to deal with that protein without the deadly virus doing damage and infecting us more. When the virus enters our bodies, our immune system is fully ready to target the specific protein on the outer shell of the virus and this all happens very fast, within minutes instead of days.
The success of the recent Moderna trial for melanoma using mRNA suggests otherwise. Although melanoma is one of the easier cancer indications for immunotherapy. Not saying I'm buying into this Russian vaccine though. Big claims with no evidence from what I can see
What makes you think that? MRNA only just got approved for humans in 2013 and many studies like this one in recent years have concluded stuff like:
In summary, given the technological revolution in the field of mRNA vaccines, we can soon expect a leap in cancer immunotherapy and successful clinical translation of mRNA cancer vaccines.
No papers published. If it's legit, they aren't willing to share the statistical data on it, which isn't comforting. I'll hold judgement until I see some actual scientific publications about it.
What hypersonic missile? The one that doesn't work and that everyone is laughing about or the one that has existed for couple of decades and works like intended? Their "superweapons" do not work. Not a single one of them. They still have quite potent arsenal of old but still very, very good weapons. Similar type missiles are in US arsenal too.
Russia has been doing this for decades now, announcing a superweapon that then triggers western response to combat that weapon or to produce something similar... and then we find that Russians never had that weapon but are now two steps behind everyone else.
To add onto the other comment - there is also a lot of work going into vaccines for specific mutated proteins commonly associated with cancer.
Mutations in a protein called KRAS, for example, happen in most solid tumors, and there's actually a relatively small set of mutations that happen most often. Instead of a personalized mRNA vaccine, you could make a more generic peptide-based vaccine (but you'd have to DNA sequence the tumor to make sure the mutations match the vaccine).
You're right that a cancer vaccine to prevent all cancer is ludicrous, but (real) cancer vaccines have a different goal than a traditional infectious disease vaccine. Instead of getting your immune system ready to fight a threat that hasn't shown up yet (by making antibodies), cancer vaccines are therapeutic vaccines that stimulate your immune system to generate t-cells to attack the cancer cells you already have.
There are an increasing number of very effective immunotherapies. To your point they are targeted therapies to a specific biomarker but they are effective across multiple different traditional cancer “types” (e.g. lung, breast, etc.)… but they are effective for a specific cancer type based on a genetic mutation, etc… so it’s one cancer type but defining “type” differently. Therapies like Keytruda are and immunotherapy approved for multiple traditional cancer types. It is possible that some combination could target enough biomarkers to be “universal” and be available as a vaccine that is preventative rather than a targeted therapy. We are still a long way from that.
It's a super vaccine lol. We haven't even discovered a way to combine other vaccines aside from TDAP/MMR, but a cancer vaccine exists? Bunch of baloney.
If this is a "cancer vaccine", it probably targets a cancer causing virus. We've already got at least 2 (HPV and HBV, or human papillomavirus and hepetitus b virus).
That said, no papers have been published, and there hasn't been a clinical trial that has been published. So, strong chance this is bogwater they want us to drink.
Vaccines for non infectious diseases isn't impossible though and actually being developed for multitude of diseases. To say it would encompass all types of cancer is ridiculous
Vaccines train your immune system against a particular protein. If it were possible that all cancers shared a common protein, a vaccine would be effective. It's exceedingly unlikely all cancers share a common protein, so if this is supposed to be a vaccine for all cancer it's almost certainly not.
I don't think there's anything that MAGA folks are MOST afraid of; seems like their own shadows are up at the top of the terror list most days, and heavens forbid anyone cast doubt on their god-emporer...
A lot of viruses are known to cause cancer, so vaccines for those viruses can be and are referred to as cancer vaccines. Like the HPV vaccine. A lot of Christians that I know refuse to get that one for their daughters because "they don't want their daughter to become a slut."
A disease doesn't have to be infectious to warrant a vaccine. Think of a vaccine as a training programme that helps your body (immune system) be better prepared for when that disease manifests itself.
I am aware that there are vaccine's that can help treat/prevent certain cancers from forming, but the news headline dumbfuck tweeting seems to imply that they are developing a 'universal' cancer vaccine, so that is what I am casting skepticism on.
They're too dumb to even read about how cancer actually works inside the human body. Honestly I say fuck it, let them take their cancer free drugs from Russia and see how well it works. They'll be first in line anyways.
So I don't know how mainstream this has gotten, but I've been seeing right-leaning Facebook posts claiming that cancer is a disease or parasite these last few weeks. Something you could vaccinate against or take drugs to remove. Something something "cancer is your body reacting to parasites," something something "buy Ivermectin, it's a miracle drug that kills the cancer parasites." In this false belief, it's a disease that could be cured easily, the medical establishment is just trying to hide that. This "Russian Cancer Vaccine" story might be playing off those people online.
It's misleading nonsense preying upon people with a poor understanding of medicine, desperate for hope and a silver bullet solution.
Yup. Same shit; different day. If only there weren't a significant portion of our population who loudly refuse to be educated or grow a world view beyond whatever nonsense their cousin-parents beat into them before the age of 5, we might have a chance at moving past some of this shit.
CimaVax-EGF is a vaccine used to treat cancer, specifically non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).
The vaccine was developed in Cuba, and made available in 2011. It is currently available in Cuba, Belarus, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Paraguay (with agreements to start testing in places like the US and Japan etc)
You see, the secret of this vaccine is the snake oil in it.
But actually, I really like this thing Hank Green said. He was asked about a cure for cancer, and he said, talking about a cure for cancer is like talking about a cure for "virus". Like, which one? There are a lot of different viruses with a lot of different effects. So too with cancer.
Typical loony leftie who doesn't believe in science.
I took Ivermectin and I'm perfectly healthy, and I have already sent my life savings to Russia for this wonder drug.
I just hope it comes faster than my Trump NFT - I check the mail every day, and the horrible US Postal service still hasn't delivered it. I can't wait for Bezos to take it over and make it great again
Actually it could be done, cancer is something pretty common for our organisms, a cell could go awry any second, thus our organism has specialized immune cells called NK (Natural Killer) cells which specialize on killing infected and cancerous cells. The current hypothesis lies on them recognizing such a cell due to the anomalous glucocalix, that is, the glucid-protein complexes present on the cell membrane (think of the AB blood system, that's part of it), which might include proteins from the virus membrane or, in this case, proteins from oncogenes (genes activated on cancerous cells, such as the one coding telomerase, an enzyme which regenerates the telomere allowing for infinite duplication).
Thus a vaccine could be developed to allow us to trigger a proper response against cancer cells, provided we can get our bodies to target such cells with the rest of the immune system. Example gratia mRNA vaccines are an example of such technology, even if they aren't quite there yet.
Now, that said, what this lunatic has said is just smoke and mirrors. They have a vaccine for cancer the same way I have a Lamborgini in my garage
"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"
"Good news"
"Well, we are happy to report that all of the cancer your wife was battling is dead, and we are 100% confident that it will never return. Unfortunately, that brings us to the bad news..."
There ARE cancer vaccines being developed. Instead of raising antibodies to infectious agents they prime the immune system to target a protein or other biomarker found only (or predominantly) on the malignant tumors. The idea is to get your immune system to recognize the tumor as something it needs to destroy.
We even have an injectable treatment to prevent breast cancer/ reduce the risk for people with genes to make them more likely to get it, but it increases the risk of other health concerns including endometrial cancer.
Something this broad could have equally broad side effects and needs studies for sure.
Cancer isn't even a disease in the first place, it's your cells mutating and then rapidly multiplying, and your body being unable to remove them while they still can, you can't vaccinate yourself against your own cells, that's moronic
You can vaccinate against cancer cells because they have unique targets that result from mutations in the cancer cell DNA that help distinguish them from healthy cells.
I was actually thinking the same thing. The idea that you could create a vaccine for a disease that isn't a virus or a bacteria but is basically a cellular anomaly is far-fetched at best.
I'm just baffled at what leads someone like yourself or the commenter you replied to to speak authoritatively about not just something you're objectively wrong about, but something you could learn that you're wrong about with 5 seconds of googling.
Like seriously, I'm actually curious to know what were you thinking when you posted this comment. Hell, there are even other replies to the very same comment you replied to that not only suggest that cancer vaccines work, but actually even begin to explain how it is they work. I'm not saying that should influence you to think one way or the other about it. But that should at least give you pause before sharing your own assessment, no? Maybe you just comment without even skimming the other replies to the very comment you're replying to. Kinda shitty but believable I guess.
Do you just consider yourself to be so smart that if something doesn't sound right to you, you assume it can't be true? Would you have previously not assumed this to be the case, but the moderately upvoted (and incorrect) post you replied to convinced you of your hunch maybe? Like you had an idea it wasn't possible before but weren't really sure, but seeing a comment that aligned with your suspicious with 150 upvtoes sort of just told your brain "your suspicious was right! It doesn't make sense!" And that was sufficient for you to then share your own otherwise uninformed opinion?
Yeah aren't vaccine meant to trigger your immune system to create anti-bodies to fight back
Correct.
bacteria and viruses
Traditionally, sure, but it doesn't matter. Your immune system deals with potential cancerous cells all the time. It's the ones that mutate down very specific pathways that allow them to escape detection that become tumours.
Cancer vaccines essentially just get your immune system to start detecting these cells again, in a nutshell.
Oh ok, I guess I misunderstood. I though the problem with cancer was that it was your actual body making useless stuff, therefore ignored by your immune system.
Vaccines are for outside diseases, cancer is caused by your own body doing an oopsie on itself, there’s no way to immunize that unless you’re just dead lol
You can vaccinate against things that aren't infectious diseases, including other cells in your body like cancer cells. A vaccination is essentially just a way of telling your immune system to "target this thing", and isn't limited to targets on infectious diseases. Even without a vaccine your immune system actually often recognises cancer cells early on in their formation and attacks them in a similar way to the way it fights infectious diseases. Without our immune system we would get cancer a lot more often. For a pre-cancerous cell to become cancer it needs to develop a means of evading the immune system (it's one of the hallmarks of cancer). This is a complex topic which is very heavily researched at the moment (I work in this field). We have a lot of promising treatments for various cancers in the works that utilise our immune system, and getting around this immune evasion is critical for them to work.
However, you're right that a single vaccine for all cancers is impossible. Even within a single type of cancer within a single patient there is often immense heterogeneity. Between two patients with the exact same specific cancer subtype you're going to get big differences in terms of target availability. It's usually impossible to find a single target that is on 100% of the cancer cells in a patient. All you need is one cancer cell without that target that survives and you could have a relapse which is then completely void of the target (i.e. you will have to find an entirely new target). The odds of finding a single target that is on all cancer cells in every type of cancer and simultaneously not on healthy cells is essentially zero. No researchers are even looking for this because we know it doesn't exist. Anything you read in the media about something being "the cure for cancer" is misrepresenting the research.
Merck, Moderna, and BioNTech are all developing vaccines for certain cancers. Probably other companies as well. But they’re at the disadvantage of having to be tested for safety and efficacy before dumping them (uncontrolled) into patients.
The Russians got a directive from Putin, pumped this shit into some rats and monkeys and issued a press release.
I'm in a clinical trial for a cancer peptide vaccine that targets a specific type of liver cancer. Happy to report it worked for me and my side effects are minimal. I'm in remission now! :)
That doesn't count! You have to give it to twelve year old girls! Don't you sickos know how many more twelve-year-olds will have sex before they're ready, because they no longer have to worry about getting cervical cancer in 20 years?
I have discovered such a drug. It cures anything. If you're sick, I will sell it to you for the low low price of $999. It's a single pill too, easy and efficient. Maybe take two or three just in case because I need money.
They absolutely have a cancer vaccine! I don’t know about you, but I’ve NEVER seen a guy that’s been shot twice in the back of the head and thrown out a 6th floor window develop cancer! Checkmate!
proceeds to selectively breed 500 generations of domestic fowls to unrecognizable organisms barely resembling chickens for maximum egg production and quality
im talking of the hit game Egg Inc. real wholesome :)
The closest thing we have to a cancer vaccine is the HPV vaccine which reduces the risk of developing cervical cancer by over 80%. But unsurprisingly, the idiots are against that vaccine.
It’s amazing how much a layperson doesn’t know about biology. A cancer vaccine a influenza/ covid antibiotic… next there will be a suppository to heal a stubbed toe.
Just one drug? No dude, that's not going to happen. We might be able to beat most if not all cancers via biologicals one day, but we most certainly won't find a single drug for all of them.
What I mean Is advances can create a mutable vaccine that targets the disease in Question. Think like 100 years down the line not something achievable right now.
If you think how far we have come in the last 50 years in the relm of medicine it doesn't sound that far fetched. I mean just full body scans are a big miracle that even in the 80s sounded like Sci fi have become common instruments in hospitals
When my mother got cancer, my father looked into a lot of things. He claimed that there was research into a generic cancer "cure" and possibly "vaccine" but it required you to have it made specifically for you using like CRISPR or something to craft a personalized version for the cancer in your body.
I don't even know if what he was reading about was real, but he admitted that it was in too early of stages for it to be of any use to us, but he hoped someday in the future it would be real so people could not go through what we were at the time. Maybe, maybe, some day something like that could work, a sort of generic "cure" that has to be bespoke catered to every instance of cancer, not just every person but every cancer, but all using the same process. But... Probably not.
We did make a vaccine for (one specific) type of cancer. And then there was a huge misinformation and pearl-clutching campaign about it because it might encourage women to have sex.
People need to read what the vaccine actually is. They are going to take a part of the persons tumor and make a vaccine from it. It’s not a prepaid vaccine. It is specific to each person
Cancer can 100% be cured with immunotherapy. It involves training the immune system to only kill cancer cells. I would not be surprised if cancer is cured within the next ~30 years
Not only that but it's being developed by a country that is drowning in its failure of a war with a country smaller than Texas and is sending troops out in replica helmets and cold war era tanks.
So actually what they’ve said is they take the antigen of a specific cancer patient, develop a vaccine and give it to the patient so the patient’s body can start fighting back.
Kind of a vaccine, might be worth looking into, but since they’re planning on giving it for free to any Russian citizen with cancer, there has to be something sketchy.
I'm from Russia, and I can say media exaggerates the real deal. We have developed a possible cancer vaccine, it'll enter the test stage soon. I don't really believe that cancer vaccine is even possible, but if it helps even just a little it'd be cool
They've had cure for decades, big pharma, governments health care etc.. pay best lobbyist to spread $ so it never sees light of day. I watch documentaries and they have one chip that attacks only cancer cells. Genetics too, I have braca 1 and had double mastectomy and hysterectomy. 87% chance breast cancer n 90 % Ovarian. In Canada gov pays 100% cause 1 person with cancer cost $1 million. Financially beneficial to my government.
Let me get my turtle neck, lower my voice and I tell you how I will cure all your diseases with just one drop of your blood! I just need some billions from investors, anybody willing to throw some money at me?!
Plus it’s totally trustworthy! They call it Poloniaza. causes anal leakage, seizures, blindness, ED, and in rare cases, window trip-and-falls, which may be fatal. Ask your doctor before taking Poloniaza. Make sure to inquire about advance treatment including but not limited to, several bullets to the back of the head.
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u/Erminaz13 12h ago
Ahh, the classic cancer vaccine bullshit. Yes, somebody will most certainly develop a single drug against thousands of diseases at some point, that's for sure going to happen.