The husband and wife duo who helped create the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine proclaimed that messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer vaccines are being worked on and aren't far off.
"What we have developed over decades for cancer vaccine development has been the tailwind for developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and now the COVID-19 vaccine and our experience in developing it gives back to our cancer work," Tureci told the broadcaster, saying that "mRNA acts as a blueprint and allows you to tell the body to produce the drug or the vaccine."
Neither Tureci nor Sahin provided more details about their research into mRNA cancer shots.
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Several days before that interview, the CEO of Moderna, which makes another heavily used COVID-19 vaccine with mRNA technology, announced that his firm is working on an mRNA "injection" into the heart following a heart attack.“We are now in a super exciting program where we inject mRNA in people’s hearts after a heart attack to grow back new blood vessels and re-vascularize the heart,” Stephane Bancel, the firm's CEO, told Sky News in a recent interview.
A recent pre-print study suggested that nanoparticles that are used to transport mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines inhibited and altered the immune response.
Last week, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued a warning about the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, saying that males between the ages of 18 and 39 should not receive them. He cited a state analysis that discovered an 84 percent increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related deaths among men in that age group 28 days after they got an mRNA vaccine.
“There are a number of studies that are indicating that these vaccines, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular and cardiac events,” Ladapo said.