Las variantes más contagiosas de Covid que salen del Reino Unido y Sudáfrica empeorarán la pandemia antes de que la vacunación masiva pueda mejorarla. Algunas de las nuevas vacunas generan esperanza no solo para este año y sino incluso en décadas futuras. Parece cada vez más plausible que las mismas armas que usaremos para derrotar a Covid-19 también puedan vencer incluso otras enfermedades , incluido el cáncer, que mata a casi 10 millones de personas al año.
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etiquetas: mrna , arnm , vacunas , cancer 
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Se han avanzado decadas en el desarrollo de vacunas via mRNA. Se ha pasado de prueba de concepto con una decena de individuos a vacunacion masiva de miles de millones de personas. Como curiosidad hasta 2019, BioNTech estaba mas centrada en usar esta tecnica en la lucha contra el cancer [1], segun los articulo pre-COVID en la revista Nature. No me extrañaria ver en los proximos años alguna terapias para el cancer usando mRNA.
>> Researchers at BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, the manufacturer of the cancer vaccine that Kremer is receiving, reported in 2017 that all of the first 13 people with advanced-stage melanoma to receive the personalized immunotherapy — which is tailor-made to match the genetic profile of each person’s cancer — showed elevated immunity against the mutated bits of their tumours. As a result, these patients’ risk of developing new metastatic lesions was significantly reduced
[1] www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03072-8
Estoy abierto al dialogo jejeje
A mi no me ha salido el muro de pago. Aqui esta el texto:
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The night is darkest just before dawn, they say. Dark it certainly is right now. The more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming out of the U.K. and South Africa will make the pandemic worse before mass vaccination can make it better.
But take another look at some of these new vaccines. And then contemplate the dawn to come — not just its first rays in the coming months but also the bright light of future years and decades. It looks increasingly plausible that the same weapons we’ll use to defeat Covid-19 can also vanquish even grimmer reapers — including cancer, which kills almost 10 million people a year.
The most promising Covid vaccines use nucleic acids called messenger RNA, or mRNA. One vaccine comes from the German firm BioNTech SE and its U.S. partner Pfizer Inc. The other is from the U.S. company Moderna Inc. (its original spelling was ModeRNA, its ticker is MRNA). Another is on the way from CureVac NV, also based in Germany.
Ordinary vaccines tend to be inactivated or weakened viruses which, when injected into the body, stimulate an immune response that can later protect against the live pathogen. But the process of making such vaccines requires various chemicals and cell cultures. This takes time and provides opportunities for contamination.
mRNA vaccines don’t have these problems. They instruct the body itself to make the offending proteins — in this case, the ones that wrap around the viral RNA of SARS-CoV-2. The immune system then homes in on these antigens, practicing for the day when the same proteins show up with the coronavirus attached.
Therein lies mRNA’s bigger promise: It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides Covid-19.
In its day-to-day function, mRNA takes instructions from its molecular cousin, the DNA in our cell nuclei. Stretches of the genome are copied, which the mRNA carries into the… » ver todo el comentario
Antes del COVID, BioNTech y Moderna estaban centrados en la creacion de tratamientos para el cancer. Para ello estaban siguiendo dos caminos.
1) Tratamientos individualizados (tomando muestras geneticas de la persona y del tumor y creando una vacuna especifica para esa persona).
>> Along with other companies testing the same strategy, Moderna starts the process of making its personalized treatment by taking a pair of genetic profiles from each individual: one from a biopsy of the tumour, the other from a vial of healthy blood cells. Algorithms compare the DNA sequences of the two samples and produce a list of 34 targets, each encoding a different mutant protein expressed by the cancer that is predicted to be useful in training the immune system to attack the disease.
2) Vacunas generales que, aun siendo menos efectivas, pudiesen applicarse a a mas personas.
>> As personalized mRNA vaccines go through trials, Moderna, BioNTech and CureVac, based in Tübingen, Germany, are simultaneously developing off-the-shelf vaccine candidates as well. These ready-made vaccines are not as immunogenic as the most potent customized vaccines for people with highly mutated cancers, but they are potentially suitable for everyone. There is no lengthy customization process; no long waits, often of a month or more; and no added labour and manufacturing costs. They are ready for anyone who needs them.
En este articulo de 2019 (pre-covid) explica que estaban haciendo en aquellos tiempos.
www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03072-8