"Operation Warp Speed helped open a new front in the war against cancer. By combining American innovation with Mr. Trump’s continued leadership, this could be the moment we finally change the trajectory of this devastating disease."
"A new study has found that patients who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines while undergoing certain cancer treatments lived significantly longer than unvaccinated patients receiving the same treatments.
What began with Operation Warp Speed has the potential to achieve something even more historic: an end to cancer."
"Researchers at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Florida have found that patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who received an mRNA Covid vaccine within 100 days of beginning immune checkpoint inhibitors had a median overall survival of 37.3 months—nearly double that of patients who didn’t receive the vaccine.
Three-year survival rates were also stronger: 55.8% for vaccinated patients, compared with 30.6% for their nonvaccinated peers. Similar benefits were observed in patients with melanoma."
"This surprising finding wouldn’t have been possible without Operation Warp Speed. The infrastructure and scientific expertise developed during the pandemic may fuel a new generation of mRNA-based cancer medicine.
Separate from the unexpected benefits of mRNA Covid vaccines, researchers are also designing mRNA medicines tailored specifically to cancer. They rely on the same basic principle—delivering mRNA “instructions” to the body’s cells—but with a more focused mission. Instead of coding for a viral protein like Covid, these mRNA vaccines encode fragments of tumor-specific proteins. The body then learns to recognize those proteins as threats, training the immune system to seek and destroy cells that carry them."
"A major validation of this approach came from a melanoma trial that delivered results few expected: a 49% reduction in cancer recurrence and a 62% reduction in deadly distant metastases.
Beyond melanoma, the promise of mRNA is being tested against pancreatic cancer—a disease that claims 87% of its victims. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering, in partnership with
BioNTech, have created personalized mRNA medicines tailored to each patient’s unique tumor DNA. While not every patient responded, those who did are still thriving years later. Even more remarkable, their immune responses appear to be highly durable—with some cancer-fighting T cells projected to remain active for more than seven years on average.
Researchers are also reporting progress in brain cancer. Using mRNA technology, scientists have turned “cold” tumors with little immune activity into “hot” zones bustling with cancer-detecting cells. In animal studies, subjects that typically survive 30 to 60 days lived a median of 139 days after treatment, and early human data show similar immune activation.
Taken together, these two lines of research—the broad immune priming revealed by Covid mRNA vaccines and the precision targeting achieved by cancer-specific mRNA therapies—are beginning to converge. Researchers are exploring whether the two effects can be combined: an mRNA vaccine to awaken the immune system, and another to guide its attack.
The collective effect of these and other breakthroughs is creating a revolution in cancer treatment. More than 120 clinical trials are now testing mRNA medicines across lung, breast, prostate, skin, pancreatic and brain cancers—forming the most coordinated research effort in cancer history."