"There is a very promising first study not yet published but reported during the congresses, a collaboration between Merck and Moderna, in which in the case of melanoma a personalized vaccine was given in addition to the normal therapy. Those who also had the personalized vaccine had a 65% decrease in recurrence or mortality. It's a new and promising area, it's the first time we've seen results like this, so new horizons are opening up." This was stated by the scientific director of the Biotechnopole Foundation of Siena, Rino Rappuoli, on the sidelines of a ceremony at the University of Trieste, during which he was awarded an honorary master's degree in Medical Biotechnology.
"With the advent of mRNA vaccines, we have learned that we can make vaccines much faster than before," Rappuoli said in response to a question about new frontiers in the fight against cancer, "this has allowed us to deal with the pandemic, but it also allows us to think about how we could deal with cancer, for example. Today, the leading line of research is to make personalized vaccines against cancer: we take a biopsy of healthy tissue and a biopsy of tumor tissue, we sequence the two genomes, we go to see the differences and then we proceed with specific vaccines for the differences present only in the tumor."
Speaking then on the prospects for Covid vaccines, Rappuoli added: "The vaccines we have had so far, even after the fourth and fifth doses, always protect against severe disease but after 3,4,5 months not from infection. This year we have a new vaccine, the one against an Omicron variant, which should give a little better protection against infection as well, but we have to wait until this winter and see how it goes."
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