cure Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease or cope with pancreatic cancer

“In the not too distant future, vaccines will treat non-communicable diseases. We are on the verge of a paradigm shift: these will be therapeutic vaccines that treat, not just prevent, diseases. This reality also opens the door to personalized vaccines.” Treat what diseases? Well, from Alzheimer’s disease to Parkinson’s disease and some types of cancer such as pancreatic or lung cancer.

This was stated by the director of the Institute of Clinical Immunology and Infectious Diseases of Malaga, Fernando Fariñas, during his speech at the round table. New vaccines, platforms and delivery systemsheld within the framework of the XII Congress of the Spanish Association of Vaccinologists in Malaga.

There are currently more than 300 clinical trials investigating this therapeutic vaccine approach worldwide; and some of them (vaccine against lung cancer and melanoma) are carried out in Spain.

There are currently 300 clinical trials underway, some of them in Spain.

Regarding the trials to create a cure for lung cancer, the director of the Institute of Clinical Immunology and Infectious Diseases of Malaga explained that they are in an advanced clinical phase, that is, they have already surpassed the safety stage and are being evaluated. its effectiveness. If the results were positive, we would move on to phase three, the clinic, although “it is very likely that none of these vaccines will complete all clinical trials before 2030.”

As Fariñas explained, the most cutting-edge research is focused on three areas of non-infectious pathologies: vaccines for autoimmune diseases (for example, multiple sclerosis), to combat certain types of cancer (for example, pancreatic, melanoma or lung) or to combat neurological diseases such as such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies.

Added to these areas are the steps taken in therapeutic vaccine trials to combat central nervous system tumors, high blood pressure, smoking, or reduce the negative effects caused by certain treatments such as fentanyl (which causes severe toxicity in humans). organism).

The paradigm shift comes from messenger RNA technology, which has been used in Covid vaccines.

But we must be careful, because many of the investigations that are being carried out will not yield results and will fade into the background, says this expert.

This paradigm shift in vaccines is due to a major advance made by messenger RNA technology, the same technology used in some Covid-19 vaccines. This method uses genetic material that, when injected, sends information to cells to make a protein that triggers an immune response against the tumor that attacks them without harming healthy cells.

This technology, based on the use of tumors’ own proteins, opens the door to the creation of “personalized vaccines.” “Tumors express proteins and these may be specific to a certain type of cancer and therefore appear in all people suffering from it, but if there are patients who express another different protein that does not appear in others, we will be able to create vaccines with with their proteins to fight their tumor: we are talking about personalized vaccines,” Fariñas explained.