The phase of the clinical trial in patients of a new anti-cancer treatment, Moderna’s mRNA-4359 vaccine, has begun at Hammersmith Hospital in west London
London, Thanasis Gavos
It started at the hospital Hammersmith of west London the clinical trial phase in patients of a new cancer treatment, Moderna’s mRNA-4359 vaccine.
The new treatment uses genetic material known as mRNA (messenger RNA). With the vaccine, such material is introduced into the patient’s body that includes common genetic markers of each cancer tumor. The purpose is to “train” the immune system to recognize and fight cancer cells.
“It’s like giving the immune system written instructions to recognize and deal with cancer cells,” said one of the researchers in Britain, Dr David Pinato from Imperial College London.
THE method of using mRNA it was also used in the preparation vaccines against the coronavirus.
The treatment is being tested to assess its safety and effectiveness in the treatment of melanoma, lung cancer and other advanced solid cancers.
The first patient to receive the vaccine was in October an 81-year-old man from Surrey with malignant melanoma that has not been treated with previous treatments.
Dr. Pinato noted that the trials are still in the early stages and that it could be years before the treatment is widely available to cancer patients.
But he emphasized the importance of testing to develop treatments with fewer side effects and more precisely targeting cancer.
As the Observer points out, recently a number of new anti-cancer vaccines have begun to be tested by researchers around the world.
These fall into two categories: personalized immunotherapies, which are based on a patient’s genetic material from their tumor, and therapeutic immunotherapies such as the mRNA method being tested in London, which target a specific type of cancer at a time based on common genetic markers.
The new clinical trial program is called Mobilize its main goal is to find out if this mRNA therapy is safe and tolerated by the organism of patients with cancer of the mind or skin and if it can actually shrink the cancerous tumors.
In some patients the treatment will be given without other drugs and in others in combination with the anti-cancer drug pembrolizumab.
The first phase of the trial will involve 40-50 patients in Britain, Spain, the US and Australia.
Source :Skai
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