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mRNA vaccines & Fight against cancer

21 Dec 2022 mRNA vaccines & Fight against cancer

Posted at 10:08h in Daily current-affairs by
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Significance for Prelims: messenger-RNA technology; Cancer therapies; Ribonucleic acid ( RNA)

Significance for Mains: Not Much

News: Moderna and MSD (Merck&Co.) company claimed that vaccines built on the mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) platform have shown promising results. The company said that patients taking an immunotherapy drug Keytruda for advanced melanoma (a kind of skin cancer) were less likely to die or face recurring cancer if they took the vaccine “mRNA-4157/V940”. 

Vaccine Trial: 

  • In its first randomised-trial testing of an mRNA therapeutic in cancer patients that involves 157 patients, and in this study, there is a 44% reduction in the risk of dying of cancer or having the cancer progress after vaccination.  
  • Reuters reported that the combination of “mRNA-4157/V940” with Keytruda was safe and demonstrated greater benefit than with Keytruda alone after a year of treatment. 
  • Compared to 10% of patients receiving Keytruda alone, 14.4% of individuals receiving the combo experienced drug-related severe adverse events.
  • The vaccine is customised and tailor-made for every patient.  Hence it is a personalised cancer vaccine and is expected to be very expensive for manufacturers.
  • Oncologists across the world have welcomed this exciting new opportunity in cancer care. 

Working Mechanism of Vaccine:

  • messenger-RNA technology used to produce the COVID vaccine for this personalised cancer vaccine.
  • Currently, It allows the body’s immune system to seek and destroy melanoma(cancerous cells); it could also pave the way to develop new ways to fight other cancers.
  • While the mRNA vaccines were notoriously unstable, researchers have learned to deliver these molecules to the body through vaccines making mRNA stable. 
  • Inside the body, mRNA instructs cells to produce proteins that stimulate an immune response against the same proteins when they are present in intact viruses or tumour cells.
  • Personalised cancer vaccine works with Merck’s Keytruda and can disable a protein PD-1, or programmed death 1, that helps tumours to evade the immune system. 
  • Researchers collected samples from patients’ tumours and healthy tissue to build the vaccine. After proper analysis of the samples, scientists decoded their genetic sequence and isolated mutant proteins associated with cancer; now, this information was utilized to design a tailor-made cancer vaccine. 
  • When a vaccine gets injected into a patient, the patient’s cells act as a manufacturing plant to produce perfect copies of the mutations for the immune system to help the immune system recognise and destroy. 
  • In the final stage, the body learns to fight off the infection, as it has been exposed to the mutations without the virus. 
  • Potential of mRNA vaccine technology: Fight against cancer boosted with mRNA vaccine technology.
History of RNA:

  • RNA was first promoted in 1989 as a therapeutic.
  • RNA development after broad application in vitro transfection technique and thereafter mRNA was advocated as a vaccine platform.
  • Safety advantages offered by mRNA: Since mRNA has minimal genetic construct, it harbours only the elements directly required to express the encoded protein.
  • mRNA platform was refined during the COVID period; it gained several revolutionary steps within a year that allowed the technology to drive vaccines that work.
  • mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 like Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines instructs production of a version of the “spike” protein in cells that studs the surface of SARS-CoV-2. Further, the immune system sees this spike protein as foreign and mobilises immune cells to produce antibodies to fight the infection.

Newer cancer therapies are CAR-T cells and bi-specific antibodies.

  • In CAR-T therapy, immune system cells are removed from the body, modified to target particular cancer, and then returned to the body to destroy cancer cells.
  • Bispecific antibodies bring potent immune system killer cells adjacent to the cancer cells by attaching to immune system cells with one arm and cancer cells with the other.

Prelims:

Q. Which of the following vaccine is based on mRNA technology?

(a) Pfizer-BioNTech

(b) Sputnik

(c) Covaxin

(d) Covishield

Source: The Hindu

Article: How can mRNA vaccines help fight cancer?

Article Link: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/explained-how-can-mrna-vaccines-help-fight-cancer/article66275751.ece 

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