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Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

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Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#161

Post by Terr_ »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #146
Terr_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a myth (albeit a popular one) that the human immune system benefits from being "toughened up" by actual pathogens . It's more about calibration by non-pathogens we co-evolved with. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700688114

What about the isolated populations, e.g. Sentinelese that are documented to die because they don't have the immune system developed to protect themselves against the viruses rest of the World has? Although I would agree that 10 years later in your life is unlikely to create an issue. > The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation 1956[9] prohibits travel to the island, and any approach…

I think that confuses:

A: What behaviors or environments lead to adult immune systems calibrated to minimize autoimmune dysfunctions.

B: Comparing populations that already/ haven't developed inherited countermeasures against certain diseases.

C: (In some cases) Specific pathogens where it is less-damaging to encounter them at different phases of life.

In particular, I'd point out that sometimes a population strong against a particular disease does not necessarily have "better" immune systems... Sometimes it's literally survivorship bias, where all of the vulnerable individuals they used to have already died in tragic ways.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#162

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32
satchlj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cancer vaccine: Moderna and pharma giant Merck are developing an mRNA-based cancer vaccine, mRNA-4157 (V940), for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed.

> for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed This is still treatment. They aren’t administering the vaccine to healthy adults. The population is melanoma survivors with a high risk of recurrence.

[deleted]

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#163

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

JakeAl wrote: post #114

[flagged]

It’s been tested for decades. The issue is protein-based platforms deliver the protein outside the cell. This means most do not get processed and presented by MHC-1 and 2 the way a genetically encoded therapeutic does. The issue with DNA is it separates the innate immune activation signal (eg cGAS and TLRs) from the presentation so you don’t get co-signaling. This may be the ticket why mRNA could work…

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#164

Post by phpisthebest »

beowulfey wrote: post #155
phpisthebest wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This further redefinition of the term "vaccine" is a huge problem by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe only Sterilizing immunity should be considered a "vaccine" This is very important, because a "vaccine" in the US has legal protections other medical drugs, treatments, etc do not get, which is why there is a push to include alot of thes…

That's not the definition of a vaccine. A vaccine is something that registers our active immune system against an antigen, so that our body detects and eradicates it upon detection. The timing doesn't really matter and there are a lot of therapeutic vaccines [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9729511/

It is now, it has been expanded over the years most recently in response to covid as to include mRNA in the definition of what a vaccine is explicitly to shield these big pharma companies from liability for any harm adverse reactions to mRNA may have to individuals

It is shocking to me that soo many people that normally at against large companies, and against even capitalism do not see the huge danger in classifying these things as something that gives the companies creating them an almost complete liability shield from harms caused by their products.

Once something is a "vaccine" in the US you lose all ability to sue for most harms caused by said vaccine.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#165

Post by dev_tty01 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bar for side effects is much stricter for preventative treatments like vaccines These vaccines are for treatment. They don’t prevent cancer. They treat it. They’re vaccines because they work by arming your immune system versus doing the fighting themselves.

This further redefinition of the term "vaccine" is a huge problem by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe only Sterilizing immunity should be considered a "vaccine" This is very important, because a "vaccine" in the US has legal protections other medical drugs, treatments, etc do not get, which is why there is a push to include alot of thes…

>> by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe...

Hmm, I don't see the basis for this conclusion. This treatment is acting according to the common definition of a vaccine. Whether before or after disease activation is not part of the definition. As far as your personal belief, I understand that you may feel strongly, but I'm sorry to say that doesn't really enter into articulating an accepted scientific definition.

vaccine: any preventive preparation used to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific disease, ...

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vaccine

Could you be more specific about any particular legal shield? They all have to go through the same phased trials system. I don't see any reason to conclude this is a legal shenanigan. What they have created meets the well-known definition of a vaccine.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#166

Post by phpisthebest »

bawolff wrote: post #159
phpisthebest wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This further redefinition of the term "vaccine" is a huge problem by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe only Sterilizing immunity should be considered a "vaccine" This is very important, because a "vaccine" in the US has legal protections other medical drugs, treatments, etc do not get, which is why there is a push to include alot of thes…

> by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment Umm. You have never heard of rabies or tetnus vaccines? This is not a change in definition.

I am aware of them, these also should not be called vaccines.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#167

Post by reissbaker »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a big influx of money from all countries We don’t know how valuable this tech is. It could be worth trillions. It could be niche. Risk sharing, not cost, is the currency of deal making. > immediately publish details and surrender any patent mRNA vaccine production methods are tough, e.g. Moderna’s encapsulation technology. Add to that the personalisation required for these treatments, and we’re still far from econo…

> mRNA vaccine production methods are tough, e.g. Moderna’s encapsulation technology …and were invented with publicly-funded research that they’ve now privatized, resulting in large death tolls from vaccine inequity in poor countries.

IMO they resulted in massive reductions of death across the world. In a world where pharma companies needed to surrender their IP if it was too useful, Moderna wouldn't have gotten funded to pioneer this new and difficult technology, and mRNA vaccines simply wouldn't exist.

Having publicly-funded research doesn't mean you can ignore profit either — the public funding for mRNA was that the initial research was done at UPenn, which receives NIH grants. But large research universities don't exist on public funding alone — they license the patents they hold to companies to develop them, which is a huge part of their revenue. For the mRNA royalties alone, in 2022 UPenn received over $750 million, which exceeded the total of all of UPenn's NIH grants for that year combined. Even in smaller-revenue years like 2020, public funding represents significantly less than half of UPenn's revenue sources. Take away UPenn's ability to monetize their research, and their ability to fund the fundamental research goes down too.

In my view the default isn't that diseases cure themselves. The default is people die. If pushing forward the state of the art of vaccine tech didn't need money in order to be built, what was stopping anyone else from doing it? And if it does need money, well... Then it needs to be well-funded, meaning it needs to show the potential for profit. I don't think charity has proven an excellent model for funding advanced scientific development of this kind.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#168

Post by woodruffw »

phpisthebest wrote: post #166
bawolff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment Umm. You have never heard of rabies or tetnus vaccines? This is not a change in definition.

I am aware of them, these also should not be called vaccines.

This is a bullet you can bite, but it’s inconsistent with your original point: the tetanus and rabies vaccines have long been called vaccines, undermining any claim that we’ve somehow only recently redefined the word “vaccine.”

Edit: to be clear, this kind of argument is only slightly less asinine than arguing that a vaccine isn’t a vaccine unless it comes from a cow’s udder.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#169

Post by base698 »

maxerickson wrote: post #102
mberning wrote: post #37

Should this really be called a “vaccine”? I feel like that is going to give people the wrong impression about what it does. I think labelling it gene therapy, immune therapy, or something like that would be closer to what it actually does. Also really interested to see if people will need and/or benefit from periodic re-treatment. I guess they can figure that part out if it makes it to market.

Why do you wanna call a thing that stimulates an immune response to an antigen a gene therapy? It's using the same mechanism as vaccines (exposure to the proteins in question), it's utterly bizarre to conflate it with gene therapy. It's probably reasonable to call it a vaccine based immunotherapy.

Because it transcribes something from a gene?

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#170

Post by owlboy »

jph wrote: post #57
mberning wrote: post #37

Should this really be called a “vaccine”? I feel like that is going to give people the wrong impression about what it does. I think labelling it gene therapy, immune therapy, or something like that would be closer to what it actually does. Also really interested to see if people will need and/or benefit from periodic re-treatment. I guess they can figure that part out if it makes it to market.

Yes this should really be called a vaccine. A vaccine is a preparation that stimulates the body's immune response against diseases. For example, a specific vaccine injection (such as a flu shot) can boost the body's own immune system to help protect against a specific disease (such as the year's flu variant).

Well, they could at least always say something like “…vaccine, but not like you are thinking. You, like billions of other people, have a misguided and frankly incomplete understanding of the word. …”
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