BBC Inside Science Is the era of the cancer vaccine upon us?
4 snips
Aug 20, 2026 
Anne Willis, a cancer cell biologist at the MRC, explains personalised mRNA cancer vaccines and recent melanoma trial results. Kit Chapman, science writer and author, traces alchemy’s role in shaping modern chemistry. Penny Sarchet, science journalist, rounds up quirky science news from contrails to psilocybin brain imaging. Multiple short conversations explore breakthroughs, history, and surprising research highlights.
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How Personalised Cancer Vaccines Work
- The personalised cancer vaccine uses tumour DNA differences to teach the immune system to spot cancer-specific proteins.
- Anne Willis explains they sequence the tumour and put those unique bits into an RNA vaccine to generate immune recognition.
Neoantigen Selection Is The Hard Part
- The key bottleneck is picking which neoantigens will trigger a strong T cell response rather than just being different.
- Willis says teams typically pick ~30–35 candidates but many aren't sufficiently immunogenic to destroy tumours.
mRNA Made Personalised Vaccines Practical
- mRNA lets researchers rapidly program a patient's body to produce chosen tumour antigens, making vaccines fast and reconfigurable.
- Willis links the COVID mRNA work to proving safety and accelerating cancer vaccine development.
