Moderna medical chief: vaccines for cancer, heart & other diseases ready by 2030

[The Larch]

It seems that mRNA vaccines will be truly special front now on. Something good coming from Covid...

Cancer and heart disease vaccines 'ready by end of the decade'

Millions of lives could be saved by a groundbreaking set of new vaccines for a range of conditions including cancer, experts have said. A leading pharmaceutical firm said it is confident that jabs for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030.

Studies into these vaccinations are also showing "tremendous promise", with some researchers saying 15 years' worth of progress has been "unspooled" in 12 to 18 months thanks to the success of the Covid jab.

Dr Paul Burton, the chief medical officer of pharmaceutical company Moderna, said he believes the firm will be able to offer such treatments for "all sorts of disease areas" in as little as five years.

The firm, which created a leading coronavirus vaccine, is developing cancer vaccines that target different tumour types.

Burton said: "We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalised cancer vaccines against multiple different tumour types to people around the world."

He also said that multiple respiratory infections could be covered by a single injection – allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – while mRNA therapies could be available for rare diseases for which there are currently no drugs. Therapies based on mRNA work by teaching cells how to make a protein that triggers the body's immune response against disease.

Burton said :"I think we will have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that were previously undruggable, and I think that 10 years from now, we will be approaching a world where you truly can identify the genetic cause of a disease and, with relative simplicity, go and edit that out and repair it using mRNA-based technology."

But scientists warn that the accelerated progress, which has surged "by an order of magnitude" in the past three years, will be wasted if a high level of investment is not maintained.

The mRNA molecule instructs cells to make proteins. By injecting a synthetic form, cells can pump out proteins we want our immune system to strike. An mRNA-based cancer vaccine would alert the immune system to a cancer that is already growing in a patient's body, so it can attack and destroy it, without destroying healthy cells.

This involves identifying protein fragments on the surface of cancer cells that are not present on healthy cells – and which are most likely to trigger an immune response – and then creating pieces of mRNA that will instruct the body on how to manufacture them.

First, doctors take a biopsy of a patient's tumour and send it to a lab, where its genetic material is sequenced to identify mutations that aren't present in healthy cells.

A machine learning algorithm then identifies which of these mutations are responsible for driving the cancer's growth. Over time, it also learns which parts of the abnormal proteins these mutations encode are most likely to trigger an immune response. Then, mRNAs for the most promising antigens are manufactured and packaged into a personalised vaccine.

Burton said: "I think what we have learned in recent months is that if you ever thought that mRNA was just for infectious diseases, or just for Covid, the evidence now is that that's absolutely not the case.

"It can be applied to all sorts of disease areas; we are in cancer, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, rare disease. We have studies in all of those areas and they have all shown tremendous promise."

In January, Moderna announced results from a late-stage trial of its experimental mRNA vaccine for RSV, suggesting it was 83.7% effective at preventing at least two symptoms, such as cough and fever, in adults aged 60 and older. Based on this data, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted the vaccine breakthrough therapy designation, meaning its regulatory review will be expedited.

In February, the FDA granted the same designation to Moderna's personalised cancer vaccine, based on recent results in patients with the skin cancer melanoma.

Burton said: "I think it was an order of magnitude, that the pandemic sped [this technology] up by. It has also allowed us to scale up manufacturing, so we've got extremely good at making large amounts of vaccine very quickly."

Pfizer has also begun recruitment for a late-stage clinical trial of an mRNA-based influenza vaccine, and has its sights set on other infectious diseases, including shingles, in collaboration with BioNTech. A spokesperson for Pfizer said: "The learnings from the Covid-19 vaccine development process have informed our overall approach to mRNA research and development, and how Pfizer conducts R&D (research and development) more broadly. We gained a decade's worth of scientific knowledge in just one year."

Other vaccine technologies have also benefited from the pandemic, including next-generation protein-based vaccines, such as the Covid jab made by US-based biotechnology company Novavax. The jab helps the immune system thinking it is encountering a virus, so it mounts a stronger response.

Dr Filip Dubovsky, president of research and development at Novavax, said: "There has been a massive acceleration, not just of traditional vaccine technologies, but also novel ones that hadn't previously been taken through licensure. Certainly, mRNA falls into that category, as does our vaccine."

Dr Richard Hackett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (Cepi) said the biggest impact of the pandemic had been the shortening of development timelines for many previously unvalidated vaccine platforms. He explained: "It meant that things that might have unspooled over the next decade or even 15 years, were compressed down into a year or a year and a half ..."

[HVC]

So many tracker chips!

Hopefully this leads to people trusting vaccines again and with only the loony listen to your body crew  being the hold outs like times past.

[Sheilbh]

Hopefully this leads to people trusting vaccines again and with only the loony listen to your body crew  being the hold outs like times past.

Yeah although I'm a bit more sanguine/let them take the risk for non-contagious diseases.

Hope we also see full support from the rich world to ensure a fair global distribution.

[Tamas]

As I understand the cancer vaccines would be personalised ones based on biposys done on individual tumors, so while it sounds excellent, I am sure it will remain an expensive luxury for quite a while.

[Valmy]

A decade too late for my dad 

[Josquius]

Great news.
But does make it all the suckier to die of these things in the years to come.

[Hamilcar]

Yes please, I want all of these! Also longevity treatments. Get to work, George Church et al.

[The Larch]

Hope we also see full support from the rich world to ensure a fair global distribution.

It might not be *that* relevant in this particular case, as they're focusing on "rich world diseases", so to speak. Developing nations would be more interested in vaccines against malaria or AIDS.

[Sheilbh]

It might not be *that* relevant in this particular case, as they're focusing on "rich world diseases", so to speak. Developing nations would be more interested in vaccines against malaria or AIDS.

That's fair especially for Africa and we need to make sure there's enough money to make companies research "poor" diseases too. Especially because Gates does great work but we should be looking for states globally to fund it on an even bigger scale.

But there's still loads of the developing world (maybe middle income) where cancer and cardiovascular diseases are big killers in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia etc.

Out of interest how controlled is the technology behind mRNA vaccines? I can see patent protection for new vaccines but is the technique iself open?

[The Larch]

And talking about malaria vaccines...

Ghana first to approve 'world-changer' malaria vaccine

Ghana is the first country to approve a new malaria vaccine that has been described as a "world-changer" by the scientists who developed it.

The vaccine - called R21 - appears to be hugely effective, in stark contrast to previous ventures in the same field.

Ghana's drug regulators have assessed the final trial data on the vaccine's safety and effectiveness, which is not yet public, and have decided to use it.

The World Health Organization is also considering approving the vaccine.

Malaria kills about 620,000 people each year, most of them young children.

It has been a massive, century-long, scientific undertaking to develop a vaccine that protects the body from the malaria parasite.

Trial data from preliminary studies in Burkina Faso showed the R21 vaccine was up to 80% effective when given as three initial doses, and a booster a year later.

But widespread use of the vaccine hinges on the results of a larger trial involving nearly 5,000 children.

These had been expected to take place at the end of last year, but have still not been formally published. However, they have been shared with some government bodies in Africa, and scientists.

I have not seen the final data, but have been told it shows a similar picture to the earlier studies.

Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority, which has seen the data, has approved the vaccine's use in children aged between five months to three years old.

Other African countries are also studying the data, as is the World Health Organization.

Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where the vaccine was invented, says African countries are declaring: "we'll decide", after being left behind in the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic.

He told me: "We expect R21 to make a major impact on malaria mortality in children in the coming years, and in the longer term [it] will contribute to overall final goal of malaria eradication and elimination."

The Serum Institute of India is preparing to produce between 100-200 million doses per year, with a vaccine factory being constructed in Accra, Ghana.

Each dose of R21 is expected to cost a couple of dollars.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute, said: "Developing a vaccine to greatly impact this huge disease burden has been extraordinarily difficult."

He added that Ghana, as the first country to approve the vaccine, represents a "significant milestone in our efforts to combat malaria around the world".

[The Larch]

Also apparently Moderna had already announced last year that it's working on vaccines for developing world relevant diseases like malaria, Ebola and others.

Moderna will develop mRNA vaccines for Ebola, malaria, other major threats
It's also giving researchers around the world access to its vaccine development platform.

Moderna has announced plans to develop mRNA vaccines for 15 infectious diseases — and it's giving researchers across the globe access to its technology to create their own shots for countless other diseases.

The priorities: Moderna was developing mRNA vaccines long before the first case of COVID-19, but when the pandemic hit, it got a chance to prove that its platform could be used to quickly produce a safe, highly effective vaccine in large quantities.

The COVID-19 shots were the first mRNA vaccines approved for use in people, and now that the tech has proven itself with the coronavirus, Moderna has set a goal of having mRNA vaccines for 15 other pathogens ready for clinical trials by 2025.

The list of pathogens Moderna will prioritize includes malaria, Ebola, and tuberculosis. It won't be starting from scratch, either — the company is already well into the process of developing mRNA vaccines for several of the target diseases, including HIV and Zika.

"[These] 15 pathogens have been known for a long time — they have not fallen onto the planet in the last six weeks," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told reporters. "But a lot of large pharmaceutical companies have not developed those vaccines, and we just need to start."

Moderna's other targets include MERS, a severe coronavirus that spilled over from camels in 2012; the mosquito-borne diseases dengue, Chikungunya, and Rift Valley fever; the deadly animal viruses Nipah, Lassa, and Hendra; the Ebola-like diseases Marbug and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever; and a tick-borne borne virus emerging in East Asia that causes severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS).

mRNA Access: The pathogens Moderna plans to focus on are huge threats to public health. Malaria, dengue, and TB currently infect hundreds of millions of people a year, killing millions. Others, like Ebola, Nipha, and MERS, have extremely high fatality rates and the potential to cause a pandemic.

But these are far from the only threats. Moderna doesn't have the bandwidth to develop shots for every infectious disease, though, so it's launching mRNA Access.

The program will give researchers who don't work at Moderna the ability to use Moderna's platform to develop mRNA vaccines for new and neglected diseases. Moderna can then use its facilities to manufacture and ship the vaccine candidates to researchers for testing within a few weeks, Bancel said.

Moderna plans to launch mRNA Access with a limited number of academic labs and then rapidly expand the program. The IP for any successful shot developed with the platform will be jointly owned by Moderna and the developers, and Moderna is prepared to finance trials of promising shots, if necessary.

"What we want to make sure happens is that scientists who have great ideas for how they could make vaccines will be able to access our standards and technology, almost as if they worked at Moderna," Moderna President Stephen Hoge told Reuters.

"We want to make sure that we allow others to explore the space that frankly, we can't get to," he said. "And that's really what this is about."

The big picture: Though we don't know the exact details of the mRNA Access program, it could be a win-win-win situation: vaccine researchers get access to cutting-edge mRNA tech, Moderna gets a piece of any shots that prove effective, and the world benefits from more mRNA vaccines.

It's still too soon to know whether Moderna or its partners will be able to replicate the success of the COVID-19 vaccines with shots targeting other diseases, but if they can bring down even one of the pathogens on the priority list, the impact would be huge.