We may soon have cancer and HIV vaccines thanks to the COVID-19 vaccine

• The COVID-19 vaccine uses the first of its kind mRNA technology to protect a person from infection.
• Scientists are now applying this technology to other difficult-to-treat diseases such as cancer and HIV.
• Clinical trials are currently underway and have promising first results.
• Visit the Insider home page for more stories.

Scientists are experimenting with COVID-19 vaccine technology as a way to treat end-stage illnesses like cancer and HIV, Inverse reported.

This is because the coronavirus pandemic prompted scientists to create a one-of-a-kind vaccine using mRNA, or a small piece of spike protein from a coronavirus particle, to create an immune system response that protects against infection.

It’s an approach vaccine researchers have been studying for 25 years, Insider previously reported.

Following the results of effective clinical trials and millions of successful vaccinations with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, researchers are now investigating how the discovery could make room for other coveted treatments.

Scientists prepare to study mRNA for cancer and HIV treatment

Scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are preparing to study mRNA as a cancer treatment right now.

They believe mRNA could be used to prevent cancer from coming back, Dr. Van Morris, an oncologist leading the clinical trial, said in a recent article on MD Anderson’s website.

The likelihood of cancer coming back varies depending on the type of cancer and is more common with ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, and glioblastoma. Recurrence occurs when small amounts of cancer cells remain in the body after treatment, multiply, and in some cases move to other areas of the body.

In the trial, which is now in its second phase, doctors are testing cancer patients who have had tumors removed and have undergone chemotherapy. Once the tests reveal cancer cells still circulating throughout their bodies, the researchers create individualized cocktails of mRNA.

“We hope that with the personalized vaccine, we prime the immune system to attack the residual tumor cells, eliminate them and heal the patient,” Morris said.

Scientists at Scripps University in California are also studying HIV, a sexually transmitted infection that affects 1.2 million people worldwide, as a candidate for an mRNA vaccine.

Similar to how the COVID-19 vaccine attaches itself to spiky coronavirus proteins and kills them, the HIV vaccine could do the same with HIV particles, said William Schief, an immunologist at Scripps Research who helped to develop the HIV vaccine in a phase 1 trial. in a press release.

Now that Schief’s team knows that mRNA can be used to target and kill HIV, they will use the technology in future studies with the hopes of creating an HIV vaccine soon.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine, researchers have also looked to diseases that they believe will become increasingly threatening in the years to come.

Scientists at the University of Oxford who collaborated with AstraZeneca to develop their COVID-19 vaccine are now working on a vaccine to treat sexually transmitted gonorrhea, Insider previously reported.