Could cancer vaccines become a reality? Here’s what experts say

A cancer vaccine could be a reality in a few years, according to the co-founders of BioNTech, a German company, which also manufactured the Covid-19 vaccine.

Agencies
BionTech founders Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci
Cancer vaccines could be a reality “before 2030”, according to professors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, co-founders of the German company BioNTech, which collaborated with Pfizer to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine. Ugur Sahin told the BBC that he believed a cancer vaccine could be widely available “before 2030.”

In other words, a cancer vaccine could be a possibility in less than a decade. The husband and wife duo behind the extremely successful Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been researching new technology pertaining to cancer, for several years.

It is to mention that professor Ugur Sahin and Professor Ozlem Tureci’s German company BioNTech collaborated with the US Pharma giant Pfizer during the COVID-19 pandemic and used its mRNA technology to develop the vaccine against the disease.


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Meanwhile, several trials of the cancer vaccine are underway and they are showing promising results. The BioNTech co-founders expressed hope that the proven success of the mRNA vaccines against the coronavirus can be effective against different types of cancers viz. melanoma, bowel cancer and others.

Professor Tureci said: “mRNA acts as a blueprint and allows you to tell the body to produce the drug or the vaccine. He further added when you use mRNA as a vaccine, the mRNA acts as the blueprint for cancer antigens which distinguish cancer cells from normal cells.”
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It could be many years but the researchers are learning more and more about how to fight the disease with each trial and they are positive about the results.

BioNTech’s chief medical officer, Ozlem Tureci said that every trial and every patient they treat in their cancer trial helps them in finding out what they are fighting against and what they can change.

The breakthrough in the mRNA vaccines – which teaches human cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response. This technique has been extremely crucial in the making of the coronavirus vaccine.

FAQs:


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Is there a cure for cancer?
There is no definite cure for cancer.

What is chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses drugs to kill cancer cells.

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