Genetic Breakthrough Paves Way for Cancer Vaccine

German scientists have discovered how to reengineer immune cells to fight any type of disease — an advance some are hailing as a genetic breakthrough that points the way to developing a universal cancer vaccine.

The potential new therapy involves injecting tiny particles of genetic code into the body which travel to the immune cells and train them target specific cancers, The Telegraph reports.

Although scientists have been able to engineer immune cells outside the body to target cancer, the new work it is the first to come up with a way to make that happen inside cells.

Lead researcher Ugur Sahin, managing director of Translational Oncology at the University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, explained that the technique could allow vaccines to target specific cancers based on the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor cells.

Test in mice showed that a vaccine based on the technique triggered a strong immune response while trials in three skin cancer patients demonstrated that the treatment could be tolerated.

“The vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce, and virtually any tumor antigen can be encoded by RNA,” Sahin said. “The approach introduced here may be regarded as a universally applicable novel vaccine class for cancer immunotherapy.”

The study was published in the journal Nature.