Personal vaccine
An individual cancer drug has been tested for the first time in the USA
Angelina Krechetova, Forbes, 16.11.2017
Biotech startup Moderna has taken up the creation of a personalized cancer drug that could potentially save many lives, Bloomberg reports. The first patient was a 67-year-old US citizen Glenda Clover with lung cancer. 100 scientists worked on the drug for her for six weeks. According to the scientists' idea, the medicine should teach her body to cope with the disease on its own.
Now Moderna is considered one of the most expensive biotech startups in the United States and is estimated at $5 billion. The startup was founded in 2010 and has since attracted more than $1.9 billion in investments. One of the first investors in the project was DARPA (the Office of Advanced Research Projects of the US Department of Defense), having invested more than $ 24 million in the startup in 2013.
In many ways, the reason for the high appreciation of the startup was the project to "train" the human body to fight diseases independently. The Moderna technique relies on the use of matrix RNA (mRNA), which plays the role of a molecular courier. Entering the body, mRNA causes the body to produce the necessary proteins, due to the absence of which the disease has progressed. Moderna specialists have already conducted clinical trials that have demonstrated the effectiveness of the method. However, testing of personalized cancer therapy in humans is being conducted for the first time, the agency notes.
A month and a half ago, specialists from Moderna took a sample of a tumor with a volume of one cubic millimeter from the selected patient, after which they began to manufacture a vaccine, which, according to researchers, will teach the American woman's body to produce substances that can defeat cancer. In the process, they created a special block of DNA, which was then transcribed into mRNA – a kind of sequence of instructions for the body. It is important that the vaccine is applicable only for one patient, since it was developed based on her genome – for other people, the whole process will have to be repeated.
Treatment potential
Stefan Bankel, CEO of Moderna, is confident that such tests have become possible due to the reduction in the cost of gene sequencing. In the early 2000s, sequencing the entire human genome would have cost several million dollars. Today, such a procedure costs only $2000. Bankel emphasizes that the falling cost makes personal medicine not only affordable, but also profitable for the companies that deal with it. The startup plans to launch an IPO in the coming years.
At the same time, Bloomberg recalls a pioneer in this field – the company Dendreon, which developed a personalized vaccine for prostate cancer. The treatment cost $93,000, but the company, having failed to make money on the vaccine, went bankrupt. Bankel is more optimistic. According to him, if the mRNA method works, then in the future it will have many applications: the company already has programs for the treatment of infectious, cardiovascular and rare diseases in this way.
However, the effectiveness of the technology has not yet been proven. Experts have questions about the delivery of mRNA to the right cells without destroying the patient's immune system. Critics of the company claim that it works only in one direction, forgetting about the side effects. The problem lies in the fact that the human immune system may not recognize malignant cells as alien. But, as promised in Moderna, this company's vaccine will try to teach the body to recognize proteins that arise only in cancer cells.
Opinion of oncologists
Oncologists themselves are still skeptical about this method: most of these specialists believe that genetic tests are useless for the treatment of cancer today. This was stated in a study of the medical publication Medscape, published in May 2017. According to respondents, there are no uniform standards in this area, chaos reigns, which negates all the advantages of such therapy. At the same time, scientists are optimistic about the future: 89% of oncologists are confident that DNA tests will be useful in the treatment of cancer in the next 10 years.
Bioinformatics scientist, founder of Oncoyunite Dmitry Chebanov explained to Forbes that, in general, vaccines against tumors are a promising direction, since cancer always has a significant individual component. According to him, they have been trying to develop vaccines in one form or another for more than 50 years, but so far there has been no noticeable success. At the same time, it is the editing or compensation of genetic defects that is a promising method, since it aims to eliminate the root cause of the disease.
"However, in the described approach, the work with mRNA inspires doubt: these molecules are extremely unstable and are rapidly destroyed in the body. Another difficulty is ensuring targeted delivery to the right cells. The fact is that today there are no reliable reliable ways to distinguish a tumor cell from a normal one. And if the introduction of mRNA also affects healthy cells, the main drawback of existing treatment regimens will manifest itself: indiscriminate effects, and, as a result, serious side effects. Thus, the implementation mechanism does not look worked out yet," the Forbes interlocutor concludes.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru