The treatment in question is calledSAR441000 ( BNT131 ) – catchy , we hump . Much like the Pfizer - BioNTech vaccinum , it uses courier RNA to provide the body with instructions to make proteins . In this case , they hope to stir the body into creating protein call cytokine , which can have anti - tumor effects . cytokine are of course generate in the body , but by supplement them at sites with tumors , previous inquiry has shown that they can shrink the tumors and even entirely eradicate them .
However , it is not as simple as just adding the cytokines to the desire domain . Cytokines have a very unforesightful half - life – they degrade in the body rapidly to stop perniciousness , and so previous treatments require constant administration . This constant dosing resulted in toxic degree of cytokine within the torso , creating untoward effects that halt progression into them as a cancer treatment .
Instead , researchers tried to target the cytokines directly to the tumour using viral vectors , but this led to genetic government issue and interference from the immune system that was unwanted . If only there was a secure way to stimulate the body into produce these cytokines at the desired place , preventing an overload of cytokines that travel throughout the body and cause problems . Enter , mRNA therapies .
By slip in a cocktail of template RNA that encodes cytokine straight into the tumour , the consistence creates those cytokine in large measure , ready to fend off the rapidly - growing mass of cancer cells . When BioNTech , in collaboration with Sanofi , tried this on 20 mouse with melanomas , 17 mice produced enough cytokine to effectively squinch the tumors to nothing within 40 days .
When it was used on mouse with two unlike types of tumors ( melanomas and lung Crab ) , the therapy injected into the melanomas worked to shrink them , but also traveled off - website and inhibited the ontogeny of lung tumour as well . The experiments suggest that the new therapy may be potent against target tumors and any subaltern tumors that may result from it circularise .
As stated above , cytokine therapy often have undesirable effects . However , this treatment leave behind the mice with no observable adverse effects .
Riding off of the winner in computer mouse , the researchers have incite quickly into human trials . There is a largephase 1/2 trialunderway involving 231 participants , withpreliminary dataof 17 patient role write in November 2020 showing no serious side - effects . For now , the treatment is targeting melanomas and specific solid neoplasm when used in conjugation with other therapy , but the researchers hope to target others in the future .
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
