COVID vaccine tech could now STOP cancer from coming back

[00:00:00]This is a story that we have our eye closely on here. You know, most Americans became familiar with mRNA technology during the pandemic. Well, now the same tech that helped deliver COVID vaccines could keep some of the deadliest cancers from coming back.

[00:00:13]NewsNation Weekend Anchor Anna Koinuma is live with more here. I mean, Anna, researchers say there is some new promise here in these, you know, first studies, not only for melanoma, but you're also talking about pancreatic and brain cancers as well.

[00:00:26]>> Yeah, really encouraging news to report this morning, Markie. Good morning. So, these aren't about prevention, so we want to be clear about that. These are personalized treatments designed to train a patient's immune system to recognize and then attack cancer cells that may be still hiding in the body after surgery. So, here's the number that has oncologists really paying attention. The number is half. New data presented this month found a personalized mRNA treatment developed by Moderna and Merck cut the risk of melanoma returning or spreading by about half over 5 years. Now, all this is a really big deal, of course, because we know that melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. And patients that have this advanced disease often face a higher risk of recurrence, too. Now, researchers say that nearly 70% of patients who received the personalized vaccine plus immunotherapy remained cancer-free some 5 years later compared to about half of those who received standard treatment alone.

[00:01:26]>> So, we're at we we have kind of first signals that mRNA vaccines can be used in cancer care.

[00:01:33]But, um we've only seen a signal so far in melanoma. We have a long way to go to see if this therapy can be used in other cancer types, and um to really see if if there's a survival benefit uh that would be meaningful to patients.

[00:01:49]>> Now, while the strongest results so far are in melanoma, researchers are also testing similar mRNA approaches in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma, which is an aggressive form of brain cancer, with some early results showing promise there, Markie.

[00:02:03]>> Yeah.

[00:02:04]>> I mean, giving families and patients everywhere just a little bit of hope to hang on to, Anna. How soon until patients could use these treatments, you think?

[00:02:13]>> Well, unfortunately not tomorrow, not yet. This is really early days right now, Markie, but doctors are stressing these treatments are still in clinical trials and they do need larger studies to try to confirm the benefits of the early results that they're seeing here, but another challenge here is that these are highly personalized therapies, right? They're very unique. So, scientists have to analyze each patient's specific tumor and then identify its unique mutations and then create a custom mRNA treatment designed specifically for that person, for that individual. So, while these results are incredibly encouraging to share this morning, experts do say there's still a long road between these early findings and widespread use in cancer care. Um but, it's so interesting, Markie, what started as COVID vaccine technology may end up being one of the most significant cancer breakthroughs truly in a generation if these larger clinical trials deliver.

[00:03:03]>> Yeah.

[00:03:03]>> Thank you for watching. Subscribe below and download our NewsNation app right now on your phone and you will get fact-based, unbiased news for all Americans.