Scientists Ugur Şahin and his wife, Özlem Torici, said that the technology of the Covid-19 vaccine based on the mRNA "mRNA" can be reused to help destroy cancer cells.

The World Health Organization says that cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, and it claimed nearly 10 million lives in 2020, or roughly one in every six deaths.

The most common types of cancer are breast, lung, colorectal and prostate cancers.

Many types of cancer can be cured if detected and treated early.

Cancer is a general term that includes a wide range of diseases that can affect any part of the body, and other terms used are malignant tumors and neoplasms, according to the World Health Organization.

One of the hallmarks of cancer is the rapid generation of abnormal cells that grow outside their usual limits, and can then invade neighboring parts of the body and spread to other organs of it. The latter process is called metastasis, and widespread metastases are the most important cause of death from cancer.

Optimism about cancer treatment

According to Shaheen and Torici, who co-founded BioNTech, the German company that has partnered with Pfizer to manufacture the messenger RNA-based Covid vaccine, they have made breakthroughs that have boosted their optimism about cancer vaccines in the coming years, according to the Guardian report.

Speaking on the BBC on Sunday, Professor Torricci described how messenger RNA technology could be reused so that a vaccine primes the immune system to attack cancer cells.

Asked when RNA-based cancer vaccines might be ready for use, Professor Shaheen said they could be available "before 2030".

How does the covid vaccine work?

The Covid vaccine - developed by Biotech - works by transferring the genetic instructions of the harmless spike proteins found on the Covid virus into the body.

These instructions are taken up by the cells that produce the spike protein.

These proteins, or antigens, are then used as "labels" to tell the antibodies in the immune system and other defenses what to look for and attack.

How will the Covid vaccine work to attack cancer?

The same approach can be taken to prime the immune system to search for and destroy cancer cells, said Torrichi, chief medical officer of Biotech.

Instead of carrying a code that identifies viruses, the vaccine will contain genetic instructions for anti-carcinogens, which are proteins on the surfaces of cancer cells.

The German company hopes to develop treatments for bowel, skin and other types of cancer, but significant hurdles lie ahead.

And the cancer cells that make up tumors can be packed with a variety of different proteins, making it very difficult to make a vaccine that targets all cancer cells and not healthy tissue.

Cancer treatment at our fingertips

“We feel like curing cancer or transforming the lives of cancer patients is within our reach,” says Torrichi.

"We've always been reluctant to say we'll get a cure for cancer," she added. "We have a number of achievements and will continue to work on them," according to a report in the Times.

Cancer vaccines will work similarly to the Covid-19 vaccine, teaching a person's body to make antigen molecules present in a tumor so that it can recognize and eliminate any cells left after surgery.

In June, Biotech presented results of an early trial of pancreatic cancer patients at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.

Half of the 16 patients who received the vaccine were cancer-free after 18 months.

There was no response in the other eight, and six died of cancer recurrences.

However, there are hurdles to overcome, for example the fact that cancer cells suppress the immune system, and some conventional cancer treatments do the same.

This can make it difficult to rely on the immune system to "learn" from the vaccine and fight cancer.

However, 3 years ago, the idea of ​​producing a vaccine against a new virus within months seemed close to fiction, and we hope that the fantasy will come true with cancer treatment as it was achieved with Corona vaccines.

What are the causes of cancer?

The World Health Organization says that cancer arises from the transformation of normal cells to other tumors in a multi-stage process that generally develops from a precancerous lesion to a malignant tumor, and these changes are caused by the interaction between a person’s genetic factors and 3 categories of external factors, including the following:

Carcinogenic physical agents, such as ultraviolet radiation and ionizing radiation.

Chemical carcinogens, such as asbestos and components of tobacco smoke, liquor, aflatoxin (a food pollutant) and arsenic (a pollutant in drinking water), and biological carcinogens, such as infections caused by certain viruses, bacteria or parasites.

The most common type of cancer

Here are the most common types of cancer in 2020 (in terms of new cancer cases):

  • Breast cancer (2.26 million cases)

  • Lung cancer (2.21 million cases)

  • Colorectal cancer (1.93 million cases)

  • Prostate cancer (1.41 million cases)

  • Skin cancer (other than melanoma) (1.20 million cases)

  • Stomach cancer (1.09 million cases).

Here are the most common causes of death from cancer in 2020:

  • lung (1.80 million deaths)

  • Colorectal (916,000 deaths)

  • Liver (830,000 deaths)

  • stomach (769,000 deaths)

  • breast (685,000 deaths).