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Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought (www.freethink.com)

submitted 10 months ago by sanqueue@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 301 points 10 months ago (43 children)

The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.

That’s pretty dope

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also sounds very hard to do a proper controlled trial on. Every treatment produces a different protein, so there's no consistent factor to test except for the delivery mechanism.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There's still ways but not trivial. You have to do multifactor analysis, but it's gonna have a ton of noise unless you have a large sample of different people with recurring "neoantigens". It's similar to how drug side effects are tracked for people who take multiple medicines, you compare against populations which share different combinations of the same factors.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Multifactor analysis still requires an underlying commonality. People taking multiple drugs are all still taking the drug being trialed. You're removing the confounding factors. If every treatment is a unique cancer protein there is no common factor. The treatment is the confounding factor.

To put it another way. A safety trial has to prove that any protein administered is safe.

Edit: just realised you're probably talking about efficacy trials, whereas I'm more concerned with safety.

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