Personalised mRNA cancer vaccine shows 49% reduction in melanoma death risk

Vaccines have traditionally worked by introducing a pathogen's antigen, a protein or inactivated fragment, to train the immune system to recognise and fight future infections. The development of mRNA vaccine technology, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, changed this paradigm. Instead of delivering a protein directly, mRNA vaccines deliver genetic instructions that tell the body's own cells to produce the target protein. This approach is faster to design, scalable, and does not require live pathogens. Recombinant DNA technology and advances in lipid nanoparticle delivery systems made mRNA vaccines clinically viable.

Cancer immunotherapy represents a parallel revolution. The immune system can, in principle, recognise and destroy cancer cells, but tumours evolve mechanisms to evade detection. Checkpoint inhibitor drugs like pembrolizumab (sold as Keytruda) work by blocking proteins that cancer cells use to suppress immune responses. Keytruda has shown strong efficacy across several cancers, including melanoma, lung cancer, and certain head-and-neck cancers. The convergence of mRNA technology and cancer immunotherapy has opened the door to personalised therapeutic vaccines, vaccines designed not to prevent infection, but to treat an existing disease by re-arming the immune system.

India's cancer burden is significant. The country faces a dual challenge: a rising incidence of cancers driven by lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors, alongside severe constraints in treatment access. Immunotherapy drugs are among the most expensive cancer treatments globally, and India's public health infrastructure, built around the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) and the National Health Mission (NHM), is primarily oriented toward preventive vaccines for infectious diseases, not therapeutic oncology.