Each person in the 16-person study was given a vaccine tailored to their particular pancreatic cancer. The immune system, which is sort of the RoboCop, 100-killer of bad guys in the body, they have to give them wanted posters for what to look for. These are personalized vaccines because they have to be personalized because cancer is personalized.
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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