By releasing these data, Vinay Prasad, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, is going out on a limb. He has overridden agency scientists to restrict certain of the Covid-19 vaccines, causing widespread concern among cancer researchers. Development of a new mRNA vaccine by Moderna has recently been completed. Going forward, it will only be offered to kids above 12 years old. Similar restrictions have been used to Novavax’s Covid shot, which dispense with mRNA technology altogether.
Prasad’s judgment is based on his conclusion that the danger of Covid-19 has lessened. He expressed concerns about the “known and unknown” adverse reactions from mRNA vaccines. He thinks these risks may be higher than the benefit of vaccination. The implications of this decision extend far beyond Covid-19, potentially stalling progress in mRNA research that has shown promise in treating various cancers.
Scientists have long pursued mRNA technology to create vaccines. They’re zeroing in on hard-to-treat cancers, including pancreatic cancer and brain tumors. With a survival rate of just 10%, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. It is the second overall cause of cancer death in the United States and therefore a main focus of these studies. While these are preliminary results from a small study, the outcomes are encouraging. They reported that almost 50% of patients vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine experienced no recurrence of their cancer.
Importantly, early trials have shown that mRNA vaccine technology could lower recurrence rates for melanoma by up to 50%. mRNA vaccines have been shown to be very effective at inducing recurrences for a number of cancers. These are head and neck cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, and kidney cancer. To their surprise, the glioblastoma study that Elias Sayour co-authored with his pediatric oncology lab produced groundbreaking findings. Researchers were surprised to see tumors beginning to respond within 48 hours!
Yet, even in the face of these exciting advances, the future of mRNA research is quickly turning into a cutthroat landscape. The FDA has only two vaccines on their list recognized as effective in preventing cancer—hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV). Today, more than 120 clinical trials are investigating the use of mRNA vaccines to treat and prevent several different cancers. This underscores the urgent need for more research in this area.
Unfortunately, this recent progress has been undermined by recent administrative actions. In the end, US government didn’t let those $766 million contracts running their course, they were all canceled before developing mRNA vaccines against H5N1 bird flu. Furthermore, it has stopped or frozen at least 16 mRNA related grants. Moreover, over $180 million in grants through the National Cancer Institute were canceled in the initial three months of the administration’s term, with a proposal to cut an additional $2.7 billion from the cancer center’s budget in the upcoming National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget.
No surprise then, that a cacophony of voices have emerged from within the medical community decrying this radical sea change. Aaron Sasson warned of the potential for “great harm” and “massive public health issues” if current research initiatives are abandoned. He stressed that severe damage might come from these sudden changes to financing and collaboration of cancer immunization advancement.
Elias Sayour echoed these sentiments, stating, “If the progress we’ve made to date – which has been prodigious – if that is just stopped or stymied, it can absolutely affect the trajectory and the arc.” Even with the aforementioned challenges, he is still optimistic about the future of mRNA technology in cancer treatment.
The debate around mRNA vaccines has only heated deeper, by the fact that some experts have fueled the fire by calling into question the safety profile of these vaccines. Retsef Levi recently drew attention to the high rates of adverse events associated with these vaccines. He emphasized that these occurrences occur at rates still far below those seen with other vaccines. He claimed that the evidence keeps piling up and it’s inescapable. In his view, the risks of mRNA vaccines, including risk of death, outweigh any benefits, especially for young people. We have to stop giving them immediately!
Cancer researchers are euphoric over the potential of mRNA technology. They are convinced it has the potential to radically change treatment paradigms. Sasson highlighted the promise of personalized vaccines tailored to individual patients, stating that such innovations were unimaginable just five to ten years ago. He added, “The ability to create specific vaccines for patients has tremendous, tremendous promise.”
