Russia claims it developed first cancer vaccine in big breakthrough, says 'will distribute for free'

The deadly disease, cancer is almost incurable to date and people are terrified of it. But will Russia's grand claim put an end to cancer? Russia has claimed that it has invented a cancer vaccine that will prevent all types of cancer tumours. According to Russia's announcement, it has been proved in pre-clinical trials that this vaccine is successful in suppressing cancer tumours. This vaccine makes the body's immune system so strong that as soon as any cell starts moving towards becoming a cancer cell, the body's immunity destroys it.

Some time ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement on television that we are close to the creation of cancer vaccines and new-generation immunomodulatory drugs. Now the question arises that there is a race to make a cancer vaccine in American and European countries and every day there is some development in it. The third trial of the cancer vaccine of Moderna and Merck company has also been done, but it will take time till 2030 for this vaccine to come. In such a situation, everyone is surprised by this announcement of Russia. Now it is important to know what the doctors of India have to say on this.

When we spoke to Dr Mohammed Taher Mithi, Consultant Surgical Oncologist, Saifee Hospital, Mumbai, he said "The news release by the Russian media mentions the trials as pre-clinical, which means it hasn’t been tested on the population at large. But it is exciting nonetheless and further data and testing would indicate its overall effect on treatment."

He added, "It works eventually by activating our immune system to eliminate the cancer cells as it would against any foreign antigen. Again it is a vaccine but it is not used to prevent cancers, but rather to treat patients already suffering from cancer." 

The current vaccine mentioned in the Russian media is for treatment purposes

• To prevent cancers the available vaccines against infectious agents which cause cancers such as the vaccine against HPV virus which can cause cervical cancer or the vaccine against HBV which can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer are already available in the market and one should take these vaccines if fitting the criteria if not already taken them.  
• All cancers which are detected before it has spread to other organs have a chance at a complete cure. 
• Other preventive measures besides vaccines mentioned above are avoiding tobacco, alcohol consumption and obesity amongst others. 
• The vaccine suggested would be a personalised medication and most such medications and treatments are costly as of today until their patents run out at least. 
• The technology uses mRNA which is a messenger between the intra-cellular machinery. An mRNA vaccine uses a small fragment of messenger RNA (a molecule that carries specific instructions from DNA) to instruct the body's cells to produce a specific protein associated with cancer cells. That protein then triggers the immune system to attack those cancer cells, eliminating those cells. It teaches our own immune system to fight back and target against the cancer cells.

It is yet to be understood 

According to the News18 report, Dr Shyam Agarwal, Chairman of the Cancer Department at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said that if Russia's claim is linked to reality, then it can prove to be a milestone in the history of cancer, but we still have to see many things about this Russian vaccine. He said that Russia has claimed that it has prepared a vaccine for many types of cancer based on messenger RNA. M-RNA are tumour cells that have abnormal proteins on their surface. This is called tumour antigen or tumour-associated antigen -TAA. Every type of cancer cell has a different TAA. Also, understand that the antigen that is formed is made from m-RNA. It is a type of protein. Russian scientists say that they have discovered many antigens for different types of cancer.

mRNA was developed against all these antigens and it was mixed in lipid suspension and given to the patients. When mRNA goes into someone's body, it makes the body's immune system so capable that it recognises the cancer cells inside the body and kills them by converting them into tumour antigens. Since this vaccine is for cancer patients as well as for prevention of cancer. Therefore, if someone has cancer cells, it destroys them and if there are no cancer cells, it keeps moving in the body and kills cancer cells as soon as they grow.

Dr Shyam Aggarwal said that nothing has been said about its human trial yet, so it remains to be understood how many doses of this vaccine will be there and on which type of patients it will be used. Only when the data of trials on humans comes out, then only can we understand this vaccine properly. It is also true that such things require a long time to do. Theoretically, it seems right at the moment, but after putting it on the ground, its effect will be tested. If they get this success, then they can be entitled to the Nobel Prize.

What is Russia's claim?

Andrey Kaprin, General Director of the Radiology Medical Research Center in the Russian Ministry of Health, said that Russia has developed its mRNA vaccine against cancer, which will be distributed to the patients for free. Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, has said that the pre-clinical trial of the vaccine has been extremely successful and it suppresses the growth of the tumour and its metastasis stage. Gintsburg said that we are taking the help of artificial neural networks in the manufacture of this vaccine, under which the vaccine will be prepared within an hour. Till now, it takes a lot of time to make a personalised vaccine. In this, matrix methods are used from a mathematical point of view to determine what the customized mRNA should look like, which is a very long process, but with the help of neural network computing, it will be completed in between half an hour to one hour.

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