Russia’s health ministry has announced a new cancer vaccine it says will be available to patients from early 2025 – but scientists remain sceptical.
“There’s nothing I’ve seen about it in scientific journals. That’s usually where you, as a scientist, would start reading about a breakthrough.”
“I don’t see any paper on it, so I have nothing to go on in terms of science.
That’s not to say that Russian scientists haven’t developed a vaccine against some type of cancer; Mills said, “The idea of a cancer vaccine is real.”
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The announcement by Russia’s health ministry, first published on December 15 by Russian state news agency TASS, said the vaccine was against “cancer”, but Mills said that wording raised questions.
“I think what doesn’t make sense is a cancer vaccine — as we all know there are many types of cancer,” Mills said. “So, is it a one-size-fits-all vaccine for all cancers? I’d be very skeptical about that. I don’t think it’s possible.”
“I don’t think even the Russians would claim to have a vaccine to cure all cancers.
“What is cancer? What is an antigen? Where are the clinical trial data? These are all unanswered questions, and we haven’t seen any of that data to properly assess it.”
The alleged Russian breakthrough is said to be an mRNA vaccine used as a personalized cancer treatment that helps the body’s immune system recognize cancer cells as invasive.
This kind of treatment — an mRNA vaccine used as a treatment against certain cancers — is currently the subject of hundreds of clinical trials around the world, researchers said, revolutionizing research into COVID vaccines during the pandemic.
Jenkinson said: “MRNA vaccines work by making cells in the body produce a foreign protein.
“These proteins are recognized by the immune system and it creates an immune response that kills any cells that produce these foreign proteins.
“As a personalized vaccine, it is likely that an individual’s tumor will first be analyzed to see what proteins are mutated and mRNAs will be made from them. As such, the treatment will likely be different for each individual.”
