Cancer vaccine - 15th May 2023

A big medical company is researching a vaccine for cancer. This could be ready in the next 10 years. Researchers have got a lot of knowledge from making Covid vaccines during the pandemic.

Covid vaccines aren’t like normal vaccines. They’re new mRNA vaccines. Traditional vaccines give people a small amount of the virus to help them fight it. But mRNA vaccines use a special protein which the body identifies as dangerous. The body produces other proteins called antibodies to fight it.

Dr Paul Burton’s working on a cancer vaccine. He works for the drug company Moderna. Dr Burton said that, "We will have that vaccine and it will be very good, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives."

To make the cancer vaccine, scientists use the patient’s cancer tumour. First, they examine a piece of the tumour. Then, they create a vaccine. This will be a special vaccine for that individual patient.

Dr Burton hopes that they can create other vaccines. He would like to make a single vaccine which protects people from several diseases. There could be one vaccine for Covid and the flu. But this can only happen if medical research continues to receive financial support.