Covid vaccines paved the way for cancer vaccines

So the UK government has signed two partnerships: one with Biontech to provide 10,000 patients who can reach personal cancer treatments by 2030, and an investment for 10 years with Moderna in an innovation and technology center with the ability to produce up to 250 million vaccines. The stars were aligned.

During the epidemic, the UK was opening clinical experiences within a few weeks. But before you use years to complete a clinical trial. What has changed?

It was really great, because for many years, we thought the search was slowly. It took 20 years to get a marketing medicine. Most of the cancer patients, unfortunately, will surrender by the time when the drug gets the market. We have shown the world that it can be done in one year if you update your process, run parts of the process in parallel, and use digital tools.

Of course, opening a clinical trial during the epidemic is not necessarily the same clinical experience of cancer. But you had a moment of penetration of the cancer vaccine project at an early stage.

There was an experiment run by Biontech, called BNT122, on people with highly dangerous bowel cancer, which was not good around the world. So when we announced a cancer vaccine launch platform, the UK cancer community seized this opportunity. We have opened that experiment at the University of Birmingham Hospital, which was the most surprising thing for me, because it is not the leading cancer vaccine studies center.

We needed to get 10,000 patients registered in the experiment, and we got there within three months. It was very amazing. It appears only that we are a single health care system, we can do this faster than any other country.

Domino began to decrease very quickly on the back of this success: we opened the experience of head and neck cancer in Liverpool, the experience of esophageal and stomach cancer in Dundy, and the experience of lung cancer in London. We started creating a community of people who were all pushing to launch cancer vaccine experiments as quickly as possible.

There are many cancer vaccines based on Marna in clinical trials in the late stage at the international level, and the UK currently runs 15 cancer experiments. When will we see the first adopted cancer vaccine?

We have an experience to stop skin cancer after cutting it. It has been completed now. We have been excessive to move again, just like each of the experiments we conducted, and the trial ended one year before the specified date. This has not heard by anyone in cancer experiments because it is usually long.

What will happen now is that over the next six to 12 months, we will monitor people in trial and work to work if there is a difference between people who took the cancer vaccine and people who did not do so. We hope we will get results by the end of the year or the beginning of 2026. If we succeed, we will invent the first dedicated, dedicated vaccine, within only five years of the licensed flexible vaccine for the first time. This is impressive.

Hear Linard Lee talking in Wire On March 18 at Kings Place, London. Get tickets in Health.WIRED.com.