AI Summary
5 min readBig shot: does a cancer vaccine work?
Steve Young, a musician and music teacher from Hertfordshire, had a lump on his head for years. When he finally had it checked in 2023, doctors at Hartford East Hospital diagnosed him with nodular melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer. "They were giving me all the Macmillan booklets," he recalls. "How to go on holiday with cancer, how to tell a partner you have cancer, how to eat with cancer, how to work with cancer. It was just so incredibly overwhelming." But after surgeons removed the tumor, they discovered Steve was a match for a clinical trial of a newly licensed immunotherapy treatment—a personalized mRNA vaccine made by Moderna, the same company behind the COVID-19 vaccine.
How the vaccine works
Cancer vaccines have been pursued for decades with little success. Natasha Loder, The Economist's health editor, explains that the basic idea is straightforward: when a cancer cell divides, it throws off mutated proteins called neoantigens. A vaccine trains the immune system to recognize these neoantigens, so it can hunt down and kill cells containing them. But putting that idea into practice has been extraordinarily difficult. Early cancer vaccines kept failing, often because they picked the wrong protein target or because tumors themselves suppress the immune system.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:19) **Patient Story: Steve Young’s Melanoma Diagnosis** - Steve Young, a musician, describes being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer, a nodular melanoma.
- 2 (03:46) **How the Personalized Vaccine Was Made** - Researchers tailored a vaccine specifically to Steve’s cancer by sequencing its DNA.
- 3 (04:20) **Landmark Results and Lingering Questions** - Preliminary trial results are being touted as a major breakthrough, but significant questions remain about its long-term efficacy and cost.
- 4 (05:48) **How Cancer Vaccines Work** - The core idea is to train the immune system to recognize and attack mutated proteins, called neoantigens, that cancer cells produce.
- 5 (06:15) **Why Previous Cancer Vaccines Failed** - Early attempts failed for several reasons, including targeting the wrong proteins and, crucially, because tumors can suppress the immune system.
- 6 (07:36) **The Moderna Vaccine: A Step-by-Step Process** - The process involves sampling the tumor, using AI to select target proteins, and quickly manufacturing a personalized mRNA vaccine.
- 7 (08:46) **Unanswered Questions: Survival, Side Effects, and Cost** - It is still unknown if the vaccine improves overall survival, and its high cost could limit its availability.
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Show Notes
Personalised vaccines could offer a breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Our correspondent analyses the latest trial. Canada’s oil market is flourishing, despite the trade war. And, why we will always love Dolly Parton.
Guests and host:
- Natasha Loder, health editor
- Sarah Lawrynuik, deputy editor of “The Intelligence”
- Jon Fasman, senior culture correspondent
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- Cancer, immunotherapy, vaccines, mRNA
- Oil, Canada, trade war, tariffs
- Dolly Parton, country music
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