Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Will there be an mRNA vaccine for cancer?
Vaccines for cancer caused by some viruses already exist. But the search for a cure for cancer is ongoing. Scientists are now trialling mRNA cancer vaccines.
Before the coronavirus, most people had never heard of mRNA vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 were the first to be used in humans.
But the technology had been in development for years ― and among the diseases it was being tested on was cancer.
In mid-June, BioNTech announced that the first patient had been treated in its BNT111 phase 2 cancer vaccine trial. The vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.
"Similar to the way an mRNA vaccine against SARSCoV-2 works, an mRNA cancer vaccine trains your immune
system to recognize a certain protein on the surface of cancer cells," said Anna Blakney, an assistant professor in the School of Biochemical Engineering at the University of British Colum
bia in Canada.
The goal of an mRNA cancer vaccine is to instruct the immune system to attack the cells expressing that protein.
"Basically, the idea is to get the immune system to recognize the cancer," said John Cooke, medical director of the RNA Therapeutics Program in the Houston Methodist Hospital's DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center in Texas.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. It killed nearly 10 million people in 2020, according to the World Health Organization.
The reason cancer is able to grow and potentially kill a patient is that it is able to evade the immune system. "They fly under the radar of our immune system," said Cooke.
Tailoring vaccines
Vaccines are often thought to be preventative medicines, but the people in BioNTech's trials and other vaccine programs already have advanced melanoma.
For some types of cancer, like melanoma, it is possible to find a common change caused by the cancer among most people with the disease, Cooke told DW. This is the approach BioNTech has used. It has identified four cancer-specific antigens. More than
Did she overdo it? With two failed attempts and one deemed invalid over 120 and 125 kilograms, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was eliminated early in the over 87 kilograms weight class.
The load was too heavy in the end. It is difficult to say which part is due to the weights on the bar and which to the discussions about her own life choices. The New Zealander who officially became the first transgender athlete to compete in the Olympics.
Why does the transgender issue affect sports?
In doing so, the 43-year
old challenged not only her weightlifting competitors, but the entire sport. A sport that - except for a few disciplines - is based on a two-gender system and thus excludes certain groups of people.
No other area of our society is so entrenched in a binary system. After all sport needs categories and rules to suggest fair competition.
Laurel Hubbard has complied with all the rules and requirements imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on transgender athletes. It was therefore her performance which earned her Olympic participation.
How fair these rules, which were set up by the IOC in 2015 and will be revised after the Tokyo Games, can be is another question.
Is sport fair?
The fact is that sport was, is and will never be completely fair.
That's because society accepts physical advantages like Usain Bolt's fast muscle fibers, technical advantages like Lewis Hamilton's faster car - and it accepts the better training opportunities for competitive athletes in rich, industrialized nations.
But it questions, often in discriminatory ways, the participation of transgender athletes in athletic competition.
Is the anachronistic sports system sustainable?
If the issue of transgender rights weas really about fairness, there should be talk and discussion not only about the supposed advantages of trans athletes, but also about the supposed disadvantages of trans athletes. Or about the psychological burdens placed on trans
people by surgery, hormone therapy, and societal discrimination. All of which can have a huge impact on success in competitive sports.
Transgender athletes, at least top athletes like Laurel Hubbard, force us to question the anachronistic two-gender norm, as well as the criteria of fairness, and challenge us to look at a new and contemporary direction for sport. One that shows there’s success beyond medals.