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Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

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Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#71

Post by landemva »

ineedasername wrote: post #52
vibrio wrote: post #2

"next target"? has been a target since inception. At Moderna or BioNtech Cancer and Gene Therapy were priorities during the last decade or so, with limited evidence of success as far as I can tell. Infectious disease is scientific low hanging fruit for this approach, but has been less attractive commercial opportunities, so received limited focus on that until SARS-COV-2. The did a good job executing on the vaccines,…

It's a large proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA. Sure, any given implementation might be harmful, but this is (so far) showing that it is not in itself a harmful process. And there'll be mountains of cash poured into mRNA research now, so if cancer treatment is a viable path, there's a reasonable chance of some success here. But it won't be a cure-all. We use "cancer" as if it were a single disease, but it's re…

"proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA."

Until about a year ago, potential treatments took 5-10 years of safety testing before general population use. This stuff takes time for things like antibody-dependent enhancement to be found.

What we do know is those who are obese have bad outcomes to C19. I am not obese, got it a couple months ago, and recovered with just home rest. Now I test positive for the antibodies.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#72

Post by hilbertseries »

a-dub wrote: post #70

From poking around on the BioNTech website and their associated press releases and papers from people who work there, it seemed that their founding goal was to develop personalized gene therapies for cancer. (Do a biopsy, send it in, cook some mRNA, send back a shot...) My understanding is there was basically a "hey, we can repurpose our stuff for something really important" moment. Which they did, enabling them to p…

This leaves out the part where they were already working mRNA vaccines for other diseases, like influenza. They repurposed that work, much the same as moderna did to make their vaccine.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#73

Post by xiphias2 »

dragontamer wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then mRNA is the machine code that exists in L1-instruction cache But we all know that once an attacker has write-access to the machine code in the cache, all is lost ...

I mean, my point is that "if (race == whatever)" is completely nonsensical from an mRNA perspective. There's no way for mRNA to scan the rest of your DNA sequence to make an if/else determination. mRNA is just gonna execute once its in the body. > Or how about some biological ransomware? Yeah, that's called a poison and antidote / antitoxin. You don't need mRNA for that. Poison someone's food, and as they lie dying,…

> There's no way for mRNA to scan the rest of your DNA sequence to make an if/else determination. mRNA is just gonna execute once its in the body.

Of course there is, genes can be turned on/off using transcription factors. Still, the sequence of vaccines are published and easy enough to sequence and analyze, so I don't think something like this could be mass produced.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#74

Post by hilbertseries »

landemva wrote: post #71
ineedasername wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a large proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA. Sure, any given implementation might be harmful, but this is (so far) showing that it is not in itself a harmful process. And there'll be mountains of cash poured into mRNA research now, so if cancer treatment is a viable path, there's a reasonable chance of some success here. But it won't be a cure-all. We use "cancer" as if it were a single disease, but it's re…

"proof of concept on the safe use of mRNA." Until about a year ago, potential treatments took 5-10 years of safety testing before general population use. This stuff takes time for things like antibody-dependent enhancement to be found. What we do know is those who are obese have bad outcomes to C19. I am not obese, got it a couple months ago, and recovered with just home rest. Now I test positive for the antibodies.

Gonna need a citation on ADE taking time to discover. It’s typically caught in trials and we can run trials much faster during a pandemic.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#75

Post by arrosenberg »

stainforth wrote: post #59
arrosenberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's more specific than sneaking in with mRNA to get the body to produce something. No, it really isn't more than that. You could send mRNA code into the body that produces a designer antibody that is specific to the cancer a patient has (similar to CAR-T, Keytruda, etc.), or you could design mRNA that specifically causes cancer cells to express antigens that attract the immune system. I'm obviously oversimplifyi…

Are cancer cells distinct from other cells?

For certain definitions of distinct, yes. Not as distinct as a bacteria cell vs. a human cell, so you have to be more careful selecting a target. For example, antibiotics and chemotherapy both affect cell reproduction, but antibiotics have fewer major side-effects than chemotherapy - the targets on bacteria aren't present on human cells (though they are sometimes present in the good bacteria in your gut). Chemo targets cells that use the same mechanisms as health cells, thus the side effects. Since cancers are driven by mutations at the genetic level, the goal would be to find a specific mutated site (or a combination of sites) to target that would allow specific delivery of drugs or markers or whatever.

If you can find specific sites, you can design a complimentary piece of RNA code to bind it and allow the drug delivery mechanism to do it's thing. Way fewer side effects versus systemic delivery.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#76

Post by XorNot »

hilbertseries wrote: post #72
a-dub wrote: post #70

From poking around on the BioNTech website and their associated press releases and papers from people who work there, it seemed that their founding goal was to develop personalized gene therapies for cancer. (Do a biopsy, send it in, cook some mRNA, send back a shot...) My understanding is there was basically a "hey, we can repurpose our stuff for something really important" moment. Which they did, enabling them to p…

This leaves out the part where they were already working mRNA vaccines for other diseases, like influenza. They repurposed that work, much the same as moderna did to make their vaccine.

That's still lightning fast by any measure. Being able to turn your tools to a new problem rapidly is a credit to you and the tools.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#77

Post by tpmx »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #42
thepangolino wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines are based on mRNA vaccine research for the original SARS virus. The only reason that one wasn’t finalised is that the epidemic sort of died out on its own.

Which is why Bill Gates gave them money to continue that work. IIRC it only took them about 3 weeks to create the vaccine. To work that fast they had to have had a good base to work from, the infrastructure to do so, knowledge and experience.

The Gates foundation granted money and invested, but not with that purpose.

Moderna:

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants?q=mod...

2016: "To develop a novel platform technologies for antibodies or vaccines to reduce HIV acquisition in developing countries"

2019: "To assess the feasibility of mRNA technology to deliver antibody combinations in selected neonates in low resource settings in order to reduce the impact of neonatal sepsis in this vulnerable population"

BioNTech:

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants?q=bio...

2020: "To development of a COVID-19 therapeutic approach"

There was also a 2019 investment in BioNTech to develop an HIV vaccine.

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#78

Post by wyxuan »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #26

It was done before when they used a inactivated HIV virus to cure a child with leukemia by reprogramming her T cells. She was in the terminal stage of disease so hence the approval of the experimental treatment , we don't know the long term effects or why it did not work consistently in other patients.

They're trying to do a cancer vaccine, not treatment for those afflicted with cancer already

Re: Scientist behind Covid-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

#80

Post by dataflow »

someperson wrote: post #66
tibbydudeza wrote: post #26

It was done before when they used a inactivated HIV virus to cure a child with leukemia by reprogramming her T cells. She was in the terminal stage of disease so hence the approval of the experimental treatment , we don't know the long term effects or why it did not work consistently in other patients.

Accessible and reasonably good NYT article: https://archive.md/5nWok ( https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/health/a-breakthrough-aga... ) And as of 2019, the patient is still cancer free: https://emilywhiteheadfoundation.org/news/celebrating-7-year...

A bit off-topic, but any idea how much it costs to get an experimental treatment like this?
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