A new cancer vaccine based on Covid mRNA vaccine technology which has yet to be clinically tested has already been declared “safe and effective” by the British government.
Known as ‘LungVax’, the new vaccine is being developed by the University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, and is expected to be the first of a huge range of new cancer vaccinations available in the near future.
Research scientists developing the ‘groundbreaking’ lung cancer vaccine claim it will be effective in preventing up to 90 per cent of cases by training the immune system to locate and attack early signs of disease.
Lung cancer cells look different from normal cells due to having ‘red flag’ proteins called neoantigens. The LungVax vaccine will carry a strand of DNA which trains the immune system to recognize these neoantigens on abnormal lung cells.
It will then instruct the immune system to destroy these cells and stop lung cancer.
Professor Tim Elliot, lead researcher at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Cancer is a disease of our own bodies and it’s hard for the immune system to distinguish between what’s normal and what’s cancer.
‘Getting the immune system to recognize and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today.”
Elliot admitted the new vaccine is based on technology used to create the Covid vaccine.
‘This research could deliver an off-the-shelf vaccine based on Oxford’s vaccine technology, which proved itself in the Covid pandemic.
Remarkably, given the disastrous health consequences for those vaccinated with the experimental Covid vaccines, Eilliot praised the mRNA roll out as a success.
‘If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during the pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people every year in the UK alone.’
Researchers have been granted up to £1.7 million from Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation.
The team will receive funding for the study over the next 2 years to support lab research and initial manufacturing of 3,000 doses of the vaccine at the Oxford Clinical BioManufacturing Facility.
If successful, the vaccine will move straight into a clinical trials, involving those at biggest risk of disease, such as current and former smokers who currently qualify for targeted lung health checks in some parts of the UK.
