Thus, the UK government has signed two partnerships: one of Biontech to provide 10,000 patients with access to personalized cancer treatment by 2030 and a 10-year investment from Moderna at the Center for Innovation and Technology, who have the ability to produce up to 250 million vaccines. The stars were leveled.
During the pandemic, the United Kingdom opened clinical trials within a few weeks. But before the end of the clinical trial took years. What has changed?
It was really fascinating, because for many years we thought that research was sluggish by nature. It took 20 years to put drugs to the market. Unfortunately, most cancer patients will succumb before the medicine is on the market. We showed the world that this can be done next year, if you modernize your process, run parts in parallel and operate digital tools.
Of course, the opening of a clinical trial during a pandemic is not necessarily the same as clinical examination for cancer. But you had a breakthrough moment for the anti -cancer vaccine project at an early stage.
Biontech, called BNT122, on people with high risk cancer, which did not recruit very well all over the world. So when we announced a starting pad of anti -cancer vaccine, the British cancer community took advantage of this opportunity. We opened this study at the University Hospital in Birmingham, which was the most surprising thing for me, because it is not a leading center of research on anti -cancer vaccines.
We had to save 10,000 patients to the study and we arrived there within three months. It was quite amazing. It simply shows that because we are one healthcare system, we can do it much faster than any other country.
Domino began to fall very quickly at the back of this success: we opened the test of head and neck cancer in Liverpool, esophagus and stomach cancer in Dundee, and lung cancer examination in London. We began to create a community of people who everyone tried to start attempts at anti -cancer vaccines as soon as possible.
Several anti-cancer vaccines based on MRNA take place in the overdue stages of clinical trials at the international arena, and Great Britain currently conducts 15 cancer-szczelin studies. When will we see the first approved MRNA cancer vaccine?
We have a test to stop skin cancer returning after cutting. This is already completed. We turned off again, like each of the trials we led, and the process ended a year before the schedule. This is completely unheard of in anti -cancer studies, because they usually stay excessively.
It will happen now that in the next six to 12 months we will monitor people in the test and practice whether there is a difference between people who took the anti -cancer vaccine and those who did not do it. We hope that we will receive results by the end of the year or the beginning of 2026. If this is successful, we will invent the first approved personalized MRNA vaccine, in just five years from the first licensed MRNA vaccine for Covid. It’s impressive.
Listen to Lennard Lee spoke about Wired health March 18 at Kings Place, London. Get tickets on Health.wired.com.