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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

#11

Post by arrosenberg »

monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

It sounds like you are conflating the antiviral implementation with what the mRNA technology itself is doing. mRNA acts as a blueprint for proteins. Your body has tRNA translation complexes that "read" the mRNA and appropriate the correct amino acid to add to the protein chain. Here is a more detailed description - translation begins about halfway down with the UGCAs: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/translation-dna-to...

So basically the mRNA tech is a means of delivering protein blueprints for in vivo production using your bodies natural machinery. In the case of COVID-19, this was used to manufacture spike protein, which attracts the body's immune response.

I'm not an expert on the best way to use the tech with cancer, but I could imagine a number of different approaches - targeted inducing of cell death, "painting the target" for chemo drugs, making things like monoclonal (designer) antibodies in-vivo, etc. The silver bullet is that it eliminates all of the complexity of creating and storing advanced biologics outside the body. Now you just deliver a bit of code and your body does it's thing.

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

#12

Post by monocasa »

Slimbo wrote: post #9
monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

My very basic understanding is you customise the mRNA payload towards the immune system targetting the mutating cells that have caused cancer in a patient (after the cancer material has been surgically removed). This prevents the cancer from re-occuring.

Right, but the immune system already wasn't responding to the mutated cells, and was obviously exposed to any proteins that would identify them.

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

#13

Post by rolph »

monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

off the top of my head:

cancer cells have distinctive traits that can be exploited for targeting [1]. A fairly elegant approach is to use a vesicle studded with antibodies to the tumor antigen to get the payload to the bad cells, the mRNA is then endocytosed into the tumor cell, expressed and the protien product adorns the tumor cell. when this is an antigen such one sees with measles there would be a long lasting immune response that would look for any cells with this antigen [i.e. target tumor cells]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_antigen

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

#15

Post by rolph »

monocasa wrote: post #12
Slimbo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very basic understanding is you customise the mRNA payload towards the immune system targetting the mutating cells that have caused cancer in a patient (after the cancer material has been surgically removed). This prevents the cancer from re-occuring.

Right, but the immune system already wasn't responding to the mutated cells, and was obviously exposed to any proteins that would identify them.

commented up thread a couple posts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26518258

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

#16

Post by mushishi »

monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

Just a newbie question: Would it be beneficial that body itself generates transcriptional repressor proteins (via mRNA vaccine) that bind to specific cancerous mutation genes instead of giving some medicine that has similar inhibitory goals?

(Sorry, I'm just trying to learn cell biology on my own.)

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

#17

Post by miklosme »

> The vaccine (...) uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions into the human body for making proteins that prime it to attack a specific virus.

I love how this technology turns a medical challenges into a software problem. Being able to code medicine will open up an affordable way to personalized drugs, instead of the current day "one size fits all" solutions. What a time to be alive!

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

#18

Post by xiphias2 »

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,…

The time that mRNA vaccines will save compared to the effort people had to do to optimize data to fit in an adenovirus vaccine in itself can speed up science significantly.

About 50-100 different sicknesses are being targeted right now (a lot of them in secret), so we can't know the biggest winners yet.

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

#19

Post by rolph »

mushishi wrote: post #16
monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

Just a newbie question: Would it be beneficial that body itself generates transcriptional repressor proteins (via mRNA vaccine) that bind to specific cancerous mutation genes instead of giving some medicine that has similar inhibitory goals? (Sorry, I'm just trying to learn cell biology on my own.)

it is difficult enough to target a cell and deliver to the cytoplasm, when you attempt to move further and deliver to the nucleus this is further difficulty. if you are certain you have a specificly targeted delivery that stays away from non cancerous cells you can use mRNA to create labels [antigens] on the cell surface that the immune system interprets as pathogenic, thus immuno targeting oncocytes for destruction.

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

#20

Post by rickdeveloper »

arrosenberg wrote: post #11
monocasa wrote: post #7

I don't quite follow. The whole shtick with problem cancers is that your immune system is ignoring them for whatever reason. mRNA vaccines work by priming the immune system for something it would attack anyway, but under safer circumstances since there's no real virus in the vaccine. What can the mRNA create that the immune system will train on given that the immune system isn't attacking the real thing to begin with…

It sounds like you are conflating the antiviral implementation with what the mRNA technology itself is doing. mRNA acts as a blueprint for proteins. Your body has tRNA translation complexes that "read" the mRNA and appropriate the correct amino acid to add to the protein chain. Here is a more detailed description - translation begins about halfway down with the UGCAs: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/transla…

> the correct protein to add to the chain.

Slight error: it adds an amino acid to the chain. The chain itself is/will fold into a protein.

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