Life-saving vaccines targeting serious health conditions including cancer and heart disease could be ready within the next seven years, experts believe.

Pharmaceutical company Moderna – which produced one of the leading COVID-19 jabs – is reportedly developing “personalised” vaccines to target different types of tumours.

Moderna’s chief medical officer, Dr Paul Burton, said the treatment will be “highly effective” with the potential to save “many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives” as soon as 2030.

The groundbreaking research could result in a a single injection offering protection against multiple respiratory infections – including COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Meanwhile, diseases for which there are currently no drugs could be treated by mRNA therapies – which train cells how to produce a protein that awakens the body’s immune response.

Studies in cancer, as well as infectious, cardiovascular, autoimmune and rare diseases, have all shown “tremendous promise”, Dr Burton revealed.

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

Rare cancer survivor with no ovaries gives birth to ‘miracle’ baby

Ex-Dragons’ Den star Kelly Hoppen reveals breast cancer diagnosis after avoiding mammograms for eight years

Women who suffer from mental illnesses have twice the risk of developing cervical cancer, study finds

How would personalised cancer vaccines work?

To vaccinate someone against cancer, doctors begin by taking a biopsy of the patient’s tumour before genetic sequencing is used to identify mutations.

An algorithm identifies which mutations are causing the growth of the cancer and could trigger the immune system.

A molecule of mRNA is produced with instructions to make antigens which cause an immune response.

The mRNA, once injected, is translated into proteins identical to those found on tumour cells. Immune cells then collide with and destroy cancer cells carrying the same proteins.

Dr Burton added: “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.”

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free

Read more:
Cancer drug which can help patients live longer approved by NHS
People diagnosed with cancer to top 500,000 a year by 2040, charity warns
Rare cancer survivor with no ovaries gives birth to ‘miracle baby’

Dr Burton said the pandemic has allowed Moderna to “scale up manufacturing”, meaning the company is now “extremely good at making large amounts of vaccine very quickly”.

The pandemic “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”, he said.

However, scientists have warned a high level of investment is required to maintain the rapid progress, which has surged “by an order of magnitude” in the past three years.

Related posts:

More surge testing in Ealing as additional South Africa variant cases detected Missing Oxford student has chronic condition and was ‘struggling to cope’ with shielding, mum says Woman handed life sentence for murdering partner with steak knife after retrial Hospital worker on COVID ward used dead patient’s bank card to buy crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks London Bridge terrorist lawfully killed by police, inquest jury finds NHS staff could soon be made exempt from COVID self-isolation rules if ‘pinged’ by the app Radio ‘giant’ Jonathan ‘Jono’ Coleman dies aged 65 Shoppers bringing forward Christmas purchases due to supply chain worries – poll One in five women suffer unwanted physical attention at football matches, survey finds Man guilty of murdering schoolgirl at family’s Chinese takeaway in Wales British troops must prepare to fight in Europe once again, says new head of Army I flew back from US to stop lockdown, claims Sunak