RCSI team in Dublin develops mRNA vaccine for childhood neuroblastoma
Posted by restless_swims in Research & News - 1 points, 4 comments.
Just saw this one, an mRNA vaccine out of RCSI in Dublin (so close to home for me) that showed promising results in the lab against neuroblastoma, which is a brutal childhood cancer. It is very early, mouse and cell work from what I can tell, but the idea of teaching the immune system to spot and attack the cancer cells directly is interesting and seems less harsh than chemo for tiny kids.
I am trying not to get ahead of myself though, because "promising in early lab testing" comes out a lot and most of it never makes it to a real trial. The science around mRNA has come so far since Covid though, so I would rather see where this goes in a few years than write it off.
Has anyone here been following the mRNA cancer vaccine space more closely? Curious what is actually moving into human trials soon vs sitting in preclinical forever?
Comments
- researcher_mel: Not gonna pretend I am deep in the oncology literature but anecdotally I follow this space casually because it overlaps with how mRNA platforms keep getting better. The thing that makes neuroblastoma kind of a good target is it has some weird proteins on the surface that a vaccine could teach the immune system to recognize. Mouse data is a LONG way from a kid though. Most preclinical stuff dies in the valley between "worked in mice" and "safe to inject in a human." If you want to track what act
- restless_swims: Cheers for this, the surface protein angle makes sense actually. I will keep an eye on BioNTech and Moderna trials and check in on it in a year or so before getting too hopeful? Not gonna lie I always want these things to work faster for the kids 😎
- luis_t: You are right about that valley. It is a very difficult jump to make, no? I have seen so many papers that look like a miracle in the lab but then nothing happens in humans. I try to stay optimistic for the kids, but I keep my expectations low until the trials start 📰.
- restless_swims: Yeah exactly that valley, it kills me a bit every time I read one of these stories honestly. The gap between petri dish and a kid in a ward is just so big. Moderna has a few mRNA cancer vaccines in human trials already I think, Merck is working on some too, but those are mostly in melanoma and other adult cancers. The childhood ones are way further back, which makes sense because nobody wants to risk kids in early trials unless they are really sure. Not gonna lie, the RCSI connection makes me w
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.