In an announcement made Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin revealed that Russian scientists were close to creating vaccines for cancer that could soon be available to patients.
A healthcare worker administers a dose of Russia's Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine to a patient at a vaccination centre in the GUM, State Department store in Moscow on January 31, 2022.
In televised comments, he said, "We have come very close to the creation of so-called cancer vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs of a new generation."
Putin did not elaborate on the specific types of cancer the proposed vaccines would target or how.
"I hope that soon they will be effectively used as methods of individual therapy," he added, speaking at a Moscow forum on future technologies.
According to an article published by Reuters, several countries and companies are working on cancer vaccines. Last year, the UK government signed an agreement with Germany-based BioNTech to launch clinical trials providing "personalized cancer treatments," aiming to reach 10,000 patients by 2030.
What Else Is Going On?
Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck & Co. are also developing an experimental cancer vaccine that a mid-stage study showed could cut the chance of recurrence or death from melanoma - the most deadly skin cancer - by half after three years of treatment.
Currently, there are six licensed vaccines against human papillomaviruses (HPV) that cause cervical cancer and other complications, according to the World Health Organization, as well as vaccines against hepatitis B (HBV), which can lead to liver cancer. Vaccine development is not a first for Russian scientists, as they developed their own Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. It was sold to several countries, although there was widespread reluctance domestically to get vaccinated.
To settle heightening concerns, he disclosed that he had taken Sputnik himself.
Overall five-hundred-and-thirty Russian drugs developed by leading Russian scientists had been registered in 2023, Putin said. Production of many types of Russian equipment (in particular for cardiovascular surgery, intensive therapy, rehabilitation, etc.) began for the first time due to their efforts, reported Interfax.
