Cancer vaccines by 2030, real breakthrough or utopia?

Moderna announcement

The American company Moderna has announced that it hopes to make life-saving mRNA vaccines against cancer, heart disease and other previously untreatable conditions available by 2030. The news was disclosed by a company spokesperson to CNBC.  Giant strides for mRNA vaccinesDr. Burton, chief medical officer of Moderna, told The Guardian that mRNA vaccines have made great strides during the Covid pandemic and have ushered in a kind of golden age for new vaccines.Contrary to earlier thinking, mRNA vaccines are not only applicable to infectious diseases (or only to Covid) but to any kind of disease area. 

How Covid mRNA vaccines work

In the case of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, these work by using messenger ribonucleic acid molecules that contain instructions for cells to synthesise spike proteins. The latter are typical of SARS-Cov-2 viruses and act as a key to allow viruses to enter and then reproduce in cells. Covid mRNA vaccines thus induce a response capable of blocking the Spike protein and thus the onset of infection (source aifa.gov.it) 

What is Moderna working on

Moderna is currently working on vaccines against melanoma and the syncytial virus (a respiratory virus), and in both cases has been granted accelerated approval by the US Food and Drug Administration. With regard to the syncytial virus in particular, the vaccine developed by Moderna has reportedly demonstrated an efficacy of 83.7% in preventing symptoms such as cough and fever in people over 60. 

Hope but also caution

Part of the scientific community urges caution and not to indulge in facile enthusiasm. Although future hopes look bright, a cautious approach would be in order. According to the Italian Giuseppe Novelli, a geneticist at the Tor Vergata University in Rome, caution is mainly due to the fact that RNAs are 'unstable'.