this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 279 points 10 months ago (9 children)

The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.

That’s pretty dope

[–] WidowsFavoriteSon@lemmy.world 56 points 10 months ago (11 children)
[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if, even at this early stage of the therapy’s development, this would actually be more affordable than the alternative.

Melanoma patients are highly likely to have the cancer come back and or metastasize. Repeat treatments and hospitalizations are not cheap.

[–] overzeetop@lemmy.world 40 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (14 children)

Which is why the Moderna vaccine will be priced at just 95% of the cost of the repeat treatments and hospitalization plus the value of the time saved and pain and suffering avoidance by the patient. Say, an extra half a million. I mean, what price would you put on avoiding seeing your parent or child subjected to round after round of chemotherapy?

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 213 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Time for the antivax doomsday cult to extol the virtues of cancer.

[–] KreekyBonez@lemmy.world 99 points 10 months ago (3 children)

god wants the children to have incurable tumors

[–] SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 51 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean don't people already spout this crap?

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Any horse cancer drugs out there I can take?

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[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 142 points 10 months ago (15 children)

This is amazing news for countries with free healthcare! Even though the vaccine is expensive, it's nowhere as expensive as the care a cancer patient needs today.

Plus you can send a healthy individual back to their families and into society again.

[–] BlueBockser@programming.dev 47 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Idk man that sounds pretty communist to me

[–] espentan@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A country, looking after its people?! Get that communism outta here!

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[–] grayman@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not free, it's socialized. This means expenses are passed to the tax payers. But like you said, if it lowers costs long term, it's worth the short term cost increase.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago (3 children)

True. My point is that when healthcare is socialised, the government will be the one having to budget the cost/benefit.

Meaning a cure will always be the most profitable, meaning we will see this for all citizens fast.

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[–] nbafantest@lemmy.world 93 points 10 months ago (1 children)

“We think that in some countries the product could be launched under accelerated approval by 2025.”

Thats literally next year. That's amazing.

Can't wait to see what other uses we can find for mRNA

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 40 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Cure for auto immune diseases is incoming FWIW

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[–] Ganbat@lemmyonline.com 84 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

You know what this sounds like to me?

Like Moderna is gonna ask $10k a poke.

Edit: ITT: Pharma bros telling me how awesome artificially-inflated medication prices are.

[–] R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 10 months ago (33 children)

Sure would be nice if capitalism didn't exist 🤪

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[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 84 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Fuck cancer, this sounds great!

[–] TheDeepState@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 65 points 10 months ago (1 children)

LOL I just remembered that some folks in the anti-covid-vax/maga category have been referring to the mRNA covid vaccines as 'the cancer vaccines' based on disinformation that they would 'interact with your genes' and 'give you cancer in 2 years'

Seeing this headline [Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought] I had to look to see if it was the cancer-targeting vaccine or some mouth-breathers talking about the covid ones 😅

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I'm going to preface this by saying I had the moderna series and all boosters. Also had COVID once, ironically the weekend before Id scheduled a booster. I entirely believe that the vaccine is effective at reducing infection rates and severity.

have been referring to the mRNA covid vaccines as 'the cancer vaccines'

Ironic, because they literally started as "cancer vaccines", literally a niche cancer treatment. When they were first approved in 2008.

based on disinformation that they would 'interact with your genes' and 'give you cancer in 2 years'

We really don't know the long term consequences of mRNA vaccines. The COVID vaccine is the first application of them at large scale, and the first application of them where we'd normally expect most recipients to still be alive and mostly healthy ten years down the road (again, because they were originally created as a cancer treatment).

Check in in 2030 and we'll know whether or not we made a good bet on that one. We probably did, but there's a reason the manufacturers were given immunity from liability for anything that comes of the COVID vaccines.

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[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 57 points 10 months ago (3 children)

cue antivaxxers' pro-plague and pro-death screeching 🤦‍♂️

[–] deft@ttrpg.network 23 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Any day now those vaxxed will drop dead!!

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[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I never once thought about it before but how do they select a target antigen for what is effectively a human cell? Maybe they could take a similar approach to Rabies or Prion Disease.

[–] viralJ@lemmy.world 174 points 10 months ago (15 children)

The target antigens are from human cells, but they are human cells that mutated and hence became cancerous. What Moderna does, is it takes DNA from these cells, sequences it and finds where exactly the mutations occurred. A mutation means that there is a different sequence of amino acids in a protein, which in effect makes it a new and distinct antigen. This way, they select antigens that are present in the melanoma cells, but not in normal cells of the body. Then they take these mutated sites and use them to generate mRNA that will encode them all, be used to synthesise these mutated antigens, and train the immune system to react to them as alien antigens. The treatment described in this article is a combination of the mRNA vaccine with Keytruda, which is a cancer therapy based on an antibody. The antibody targets a protein from the PD-1 / PD-L1 axis. This axis is used by normal cells to tell the immune system not to attack those cells, because they are body's own cells. Cancer cells often mutate like crazy, but then exploit this PD-1 / PD-L1 axis basically to say to the immune system "nothing to see here".

As for Rabies, I think we already have pretty well working vaccines, so we're not really in a dire need for new ones.

As for prions, it would be tricky. The reason prions do what they do is not that they are mutated proteins, but misfolded proteins. This is to say they assume the wrong shape, even though the sequence of amino acids in them is the same as in the healthy version of the protein. And this in turn means that they were synthesised based on a healthy, unmutated version of mRNA. And this in turn means that there is no mutation that the Moderna vaccine strategy could employ to train the immune system to recognise that prion protein.

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 53 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Holy shit, this is a type of down to earth, factual and enlightening comment that we used to get in reddit! Thanks for this!

[–] viralJ@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the kind reaction.

I recently moved from Reddit to Lemmy (same username) and I took my comments with me.

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[–] trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com 33 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Can't wait for it to be specifically priced for only the 1% to be able to afford. Just like all the other cancer drugs that work.

[–] skeezix@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

It’s for rich folk. Not for us poors. Elysium.

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[–] xor@sh.itjust.works 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

what's really cool is this plus telomerase will give us a youth serum

[–] Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

what's really cool is this plus telomerase will give the extremely wealthy a youth serum

FTFY

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Here's the thing: we're not getting many people to the natural limits of the human body's age much less working out ways to go past that.

Jeanne Louise Calment was 122 when she died. There's a hypothesis that she switched identities with her mother at some point, but most scientists who study aging don't consider it credible. Many other supercentenarian claims don't hold up; they often come from places that had bad record keeping a century ago, and they just forget how many birthdays they've had. 115 seems the typical limit for most people, but even that might have very few legit claims.

There are so few people who make it that far that they're basically rounding error even when including incorrect claims. Monaco has the highest average life expectancy at 87. We should be able to add almost 30 more years to that before we even talk about extraordinary youth serums.

Better cancer treatments will be part of getting us there, but far from the only factor.

[–] xor@sh.itjust.works 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

telomeres are cells' biological clock... they get shorter with each division, and is the general cause of your body breaking down, round the 80's.
telomerase and other chemicals can reset those telomeres, but also cause the body's existing precancerous cells to go malignant. (telomeres also limit cancer cell growth, and creating telomerase is one of the mutations required for full on cancer)
so, if we can regrow cells telomeres without causing cancer... we have a youth serum.
but there's already other telomerase gene therapy in development anyways...

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