How innovative cancer treatment idea led to COVID vaccine

The covid-19 vaccine was made and approved for use at a pace that most didn’t imagine possible, even in the scientific community. The vaccine is helping the world deal with the pandemic, despite the disparity in its distribution.

Applications from covid-19 vaccine (specifically the first one developed) development may help humanity tackle cancer and other diseases, the doctors behind the vaccine told in Spain.

Speaking in the city of Oviedo, where they received a prestigious Princess of Asturias Award from the Spanish royal family, BioNTech co-founders, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci gave intriguing details of how their groundbreaking vaccine came about.

One of the key interesting aspects of this development process is that its most direct roots trace back to the 1990s. That is when the two doctors, who both came from immigrant Turkish families, were working at an oncology ward in a German hospital but were “depressed” about how often cancer treatments end in failure. They were compelled to find solutions, so at night, they dove back into the lab. Sahin and Tureci are also immunologists, focused on figuring out how to get immune cells to attack cancer cells.

Sahin explained that, “Our motivation from the very beginning was to combine our two worlds: the curiosity, understanding, and development of science and helping our patients.”

Together they identified what makes tumor cells different from normal cells, which can be revealed by certain markers like antigens. However, training the immune system to kill cancer cells was not as simple as targeting one marker and giving the same vaccine to every patient. So they decided that individualized cancer treatments were the ideal approach. Their idea was to take a biopsy from each patient, study its particular unique markers, and prepare personalized vaccines.

“That was a crazy idea, like science fiction in the 1990s,” said Sahin. “We didn’t dare talk about it. A lot of times, scientists want to stay credible so they don’t talk about their biggest ideas.”

It was far-fetched because it was extremely complicated. The doctors needed to make sure that the technology was flexible, strong enough to annihilate cancer, and able to be rapidly manufactured. Where cancer is involved, timing can make all the difference in the world.

Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on November 1, 2021.