🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: University of Florida Scientists Develop an mRNA Cancer Vaccine That Reprograms the Immune System to Hunt Down Cancer Cells Without Genetically Engineering Immune Cells Outside the Body Led by Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D.
— SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) (@covid19disease.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T13:05:39.164Z
Fingers crossed
I am a cancer survivor, that would be amazing. Hope these scientists hang on and continue their research for the next few years.
Read the linked article in the thread, and just a note of wet-blanketness:
Yes, it’s a very promising approach. But. It relies on a rather generalized stimulation of the immune system.
The problem with those approaches is it’s very hard to tell the immune system when enough is enough. Lupus is immune system overreaction. You wouldn’t want your cancer vaccine to get rid of the cancer and then go on to get rid of everything else.
That’s where similar approaches have fallen down in the past. The fact that it works in mouse models is good, but not sufficient. Mice have pretty robust immune systems, more so than humans for a lot of things, and they don’t live long enough to show five- or ten-year consequences.
(The article, https://ufhealth.org/news/2025/surprising-finding-could-pave-way-for-universal-cancer-vaccine , goes on to mention another mRNA vaccine by Sayour and his group that worked well in a patient. But: that one is targeted to that specific tumor, like all (?) the approved anticancer vaccines so far. Once it’s destroyed the tumor, the target doesn’t occur in the rest of the body so it’s done. That makes it much safer.)