According to Russian news agency TASS, Russia has developed an mRNA vaccine for cancer. Andrey Kaprin, the General Director of the Radiology Medical Research Center of the Russian Ministry of Health, informed Radio Rossiya that the vaccine will be provided free of charge to cancer patients.
Russia’s mRNA Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise for 2025 Release
Developed in collaboration with several research centers, the vaccine is expected to be available for public use by early 2025. According to Alexander Gintsburg, Director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, the vaccine’s pre-clinical trials demonstrated its ability to suppress tumor development and potential metastases, as he shared with TASS.
mRNA, or messenger-RNA, vaccines use specific components of an infectious agent, such as its protein, sugar, or coating. These vaccines instruct our cells to produce a protein, or a part of it, that resembles the virus’s protein. In turn, this protein prompts an immune response within our bodies.
AI to Speed Up Personalized Cancer Vaccine Development
In an earlier interview with TASS, Mr. Gintsburg mentioned that using artificial neural networks could reduce the time needed for computing a personalized cancer vaccine to less than an hour.
Russia’s vaccine chief explained, “Currently, building personalized vaccines takes a considerable amount of time because the process of computing how a vaccine, or customized mRNA, should be designed uses matrix methods in mathematical terms. We have partnered with the Ivannikov Institute, which will use AI, specifically neural network computing, to perform these calculations. This should reduce the time to about half an hour to an hour.”
