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iNstein t1_iw7ie4q wrote

Reply to comment by ghostfuckbuddy in Experimental Cancer Vaccine Yields Promising Results: NIH Finds Significant Tumor Regression by Shelfrock77

Vaccines use your immune system to do the actual work. The type of vaccines you are thinking of basically teach your immune systen how to fight off a particular virus. These cancer vaccines basically teach your immune system to fight off cancer cells instead of viruses.

Calling it a cure is misleading in that cures are basically considered almost 100% effective but this approach, at least at this point, is only effective some or most of the time.

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capsicum_fondler t1_iw7onjt wrote

To add to this...

The Covid-19 mRNA vaccines use the genetic code for the spike protein on the outside of the virus.

Afaik, for a cancer vaccine you check what proteins are uniquely present on the surface of cancer cells, and then illicit an immune respone for that protein using an mRNA vaccine.

Basically the same logic. However, the difficulty with cancer vaccines is deciding which protein to target, not to mention the diversity of types of cancer.

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