Vinod Balachandran, a leading surgical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, discusses groundbreaking advancements in pancreatic cancer research. He explains how cancer, especially pancreatic cancer, cleverly disguises itself from the immune system. Excitingly, new mRNA-based personalized vaccines are showing promising results, with 75% of responding patients becoming cancer-free after three years. He also highlights innovations like an 85% accurate blood test for early detection, providing hope in the fight against this formidable disease.

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 Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Vinod Balachandran, an expert in pancreatic cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering, discusses groundbreaking advancements in vaccine development. He shares promising results from a small trial of an mRNA vaccine that showed half of the participants developed a lasting immune response. Remarkably, six out of eight of these patients remained cancer-free for over three years. Balachandran emphasizes the potential of personalized vaccines and the revolutionary shift these could bring to cancer treatment, especially for hard-to-treat cancers.