Cancer: Not a Victory, but a Breakthrough. How Vaccines Will Change Oncology

This was stated by Anton Saad, an oncologist and expert at the "Onkologika" charitable foundation, in an interview with RIA Novosti.

The specialist emphasized that cancer is not a single disease, but hundreds of genetically heterogeneous diseases, which makes the task of its complete eradication extremely difficult. However, active developments are already underway in the field of personalized mRNA vaccines, which are showing encouraging results.

For instance, during research involving patients with melanoma, the combination of an mRNA vaccine with an immunotherapy drug reduced the risk of recurrence from 38% to 21% over a period of one and a half years. Similar trials are now being conducted for other types of cancer — lung, pancreatic, and colorectal.

According to Saad, in the future, many forms of cancer could turn into chronic controlled conditions. Personalized vaccines will become an important supplement to surgery and immunotherapy, significantly increasing patients' chances for a long life without recurrence.