A T cell is a unique immune cell in the human body that protects the human body against a variety of threats. In these long-term survivors, what we found is that in their bodies, T cells are able to recognize mutations in their cancers as foreign. These proteins are individual to every single patient's tumor. So in order to make a vaccine, this would need you to make avaccine that is individual for every single patient.
Dr. Vinod Balachandran explains how he and his colleagues successfully treated pancreatic cancer with bespoke mRNA vaccines. Science journalist Charles Graeber says this could be cancer’s “penicillin moment.”
This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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