From Lab to Life Progress Toward a Cancer Vaccine

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Yesterday, Science Daily reported on a breakthrough in research to create an mRNA cancer vaccine: “Researchers found that mRNA cancer vaccines can recruit an unexpected immune cell to launch powerful tumor-fighting responses, overturning a long-held assumption about how the vaccines work. The discovery could lead to more effective cancer vaccines and help scientists tailor treatments for better patient outcomes.”

Background: An mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine gives your cells a set of instructions to make a harmless piece of a target pathogen—like a viral protein. Your immune system recognizes this protein as foreign, triggers a defensive response, and builds antibodies to fight off future infections. mRNA vaccines are changing modern medicine. mRNA technology was the basis of the Moderna COVID vaccine.

“The success of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed vaccine science. Now, the same Nobel Prize winning technology is being adapted to fight cancer, with experimental mRNA vaccines already being tested against melanoma, small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, and several other cancers. Researchers hope these vaccines could eventually provide powerful new ways to prevent and treat the disease.”

In a blog I wrote during the COVID pandemic, on a different site, I observed: For decades, perhaps centuries, medical science has sought to find drugs that mitigate or cure disease. At last, an innovation has been born. Instead – help the body’s immune system itself fight the invading disease.

The breakthrough is in large part due to a chance conversation. U. of Pennsylvania immunologist Drew Weissman met a biochemist Katalin Kariko, an immigrant to the US from Hungary, at the photocopy machine. They commiserated about lack of funding for their RNA research. Kariko had been working on RNA therapy for brain diseases and strokes, finding a decade-long stonewall by ‘experts’ who denied her funding. Weissman, who studied vaccine, supported her research in his lab.  Together they won the 2023 Nobel Prize.

Here is their basic idea. RNA is ribonucleic acid. mRNA (messenger RNA) is a template for producing proteins – in turn, vital for the body’s health. Inside the cell, mRNA initiates production of specific proteins.

What if you could introduce mRNA to the body, that produced a protein that signaled ‘disease!!!!’, e.g. a protein from the COVID virus ‘spike’ protein? The body would respond by producing antibodies – absorbing the mRNA into the cell, and the triggering the antibody production to fight the disease and perhaps prevent it.

Whacko idea? Sure. Problem is, whenever any strange substance enters the body, it is destroyed by the body’s immune system very quickly. How in the world do you smuggle mRNA into the cell – so it can do its blessed work? Weissman and Kariko worked on this for years…while battling to gain funding from the skeptics.

They made a breakthrough. Wrap the mRNA in lipid (fat) nanoparticles. The lipid molecule protects the delicate mRNA, until it can reach the desired destination within cells. Weissman and Kariko proved the concept with animals. They published their results, and vaccine companies (Moderna and BioNTech) quickly took up the cudgel, along (later) with giant Pfizer.

The resulting mRNA COVID vaccine saved many millions of lives. Seven million people have died so far from COVID! How many more would have died, had it not been for the mRNA vaccine?

Now, comes this development: “A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has uncovered an unexpected feature of how mRNA cancer vaccines work. In experiments with mice, scientists found that mRNA cancer vaccines remained highly effective even when an immune cell long believed to be essential was missing. Instead, another closely related immune cell stepped in to trigger a strong attack against tumors. The findings, published in Nature, offer new insight into how the immune system responds to mRNA vaccines and could help researchers design more effective cancer vaccines in the future.” *

*“Suin Jo, Lijin Li, Chandrani Thakur, Kevin A. Telfer, Hussein Sultan, Ray A. Ohara, Michelle He, Giri Nam, Jing Chen, Feiya Ou, Monia Draghi, Nicholas M. Valiante, Robert D. Schreiber, Gwendalyn J. Randolph, Naresha Saligrama, Theresa L. Murphy, William E. Gillanders, Kenneth M. Murphy. mRNA vaccines engage unconventional pathways in CD8 T cell priming. Nature, 2026; 654 (8118): 485 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10353-6

Can we dream of an mRNA cancer vaccine, just as effective as the mRNA COVID vaccine, effective against a broad range of cancers? Ten million people die yearly of cancer. I myself had prostate cancer in 2001 (I have been cancer-free since then,  following surgery).

A Nobel Prize awaits the team that creates an mRNA cancer vaccine!