Re:mRNA vaccines: let's eradicate herpes, cure cancer, and b...
by mateo1 on Saturday March 09, 2024 @07:19PM
(#39655709)
This has a precondition: the existence of targets unique to the cancer cell. That's not necessarily true. In theory you can have cancerous cells that are (at least in the epitope-space) indistinguishable from normal cells. I'm not a doctor, and I guess (and hope) this is an usual case, but finding a truly unique and dissimilar mutation sounds pretty hard, training the immune system to detect it correctly without generalizing sounds even harder. Potential, sure, and I hope this proceeds and yields some therapies that are safer than chemotherapy, but we need to be realistic with what we'll probably get.
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Re:mRNA vaccines: let's eradicate herpes, cure cancer, and b...
by epistasis on Saturday March 09, 2024 @08:12PM
(#39655960)
It's not that hard, in patients with cancer, it's very common for the immune system to go after the cancer specific mutations, until the cancer learns to express the cell-surface checkpoints that deactivate the immune system.
Its extremely rare (or at least I have not heard of it) to develop auto-immune activity during the course of cancer.
T-cell receptors that recogize HLA-bound epitopes tend to be extremely specific, and rarely go after other parts of the body. There's nothing special about cancer in this regard.