Neuro-oncologist Dr. Santosh Kesari talks about the difficulties of treating brain cancer and the promise that mRNA vaccines hold.
Around 40% of us are likely to develop cancer at some point in our lives. Modern medicine has seen considerable advances in cancer treatments, which has contributed to a steady decline in cancer deaths in the United States over the past 30 years.
Despite this, around
Brain cancers are notoriously difficult to treat, in part because of the challenges of delivering drugs into the brain. Only around 36% of people with malignant brain cancer survive more than 5 years.
Could mRNA vaccines hold the answer?
To find out, I spoke to Dr. Santosh Kesari, a neurologist and neuro-oncologist. Dr. Kesari is the director of Neuro-oncology at Pacific Neuroscience Institute and a professor in the Department of Translational Neurosciences and Neurotherapeutics at Saint John’s Cancer Institute, both in Santa Monica, CA.
We talked about the challenges of treating brain cancer and why Dr. Kesari thinks that mRNA vaccines have the potential to impact cancer treatment on a global scale.
To hear more about how cancer develops, how experts are developing tailored treatments for individual patients, and how Dr. Kesari sees mRNA vaccines and the future of cancer therapies, listen to the accompanying podcast here.
To start our conversation, I asked Dr. Kesari to share the biggest challenge he faces when treating his patients.
“One of the difficult things and the reason we haven’t made as much progress in brain cancer, and actually all brain disorders in general, is the blood-brain barrier,” he explained.
The blood-brain barrier comprises a lining of cells around the blood vessels in the brain. It prevents big molecules and pathogens from entering the brain.
“It’s really an evolutionary protective mechanism. We don’t want all the things that the rest of our body sees to go into the brain and cause neurological problems, including infections [by] viruses, bacteria, etc.,” Dr. Kesari said.
Yet, this also means delivering drugs into the brain is difficult.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology has become almost a household name in the past year. Two COVID-19 vaccines, by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, employ this technology.
But mRNA vaccine research also has strong roots in the cancer field.
Dr. Kesari explained where he sees the potential for mRNA vaccines in cancer. “The great thing about mRNA [vaccines] are the manufacturing, scalability, and cost,” he said.
He used COVID-19 as an example. Scientists from China published the molecular code for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in January 2020. This allowed scientists and pharmaceutical companies with mRNA vaccine development expertise to initiate work on creating novel mRNA vaccines specifically designed to match the virus.
“It’s really built upon decades of research and informatics because understanding what’s a good vaccine [and] what’s not a good vaccine at the protein level, and then translating to the mRNA level has been built over many decades,” Dr. Kesari explained.
He drew a parallel between COVID-19 and the challenges he faces when treating patients with brain cancer.
Dr. Kesari sees great potential in mRNA vaccines as part of a wider arsenal to treat his patients. The speed and ease of manufacturing make this particular vaccine platform an attractive candidate for novel treatments.
Source: Medical News Today
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