World’s first lung cancer vaccine being developed
A groundbreaking new vaccine is in the works that could help prevent people from developing cancer.
The vaccine will reportedly use similar technology that created the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
'LungVax' is being created by scientists from the University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute and University College London (UCL).
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There are hopes that vaccine will activate the immune system to kill cancer cells attributed to lung cancer.
In a positive development, the project has been granted £1.7 million ($2,139,225) by charities Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation.
This will go towards creating 3,000 of the potentially lifesaving jabs.
The jab will work by using a strand of DNA which trains the immune system to recognise 'red flag' proteins in lung cancer cells and kill them, Sky News reports.
Speaking about the project, Professor Tim Elliott, research lead for LungVax, explained, as per Cancer Research UK: "Cancer is a disease of our own bodies and it’s hard for the immune system to distinguish between what’s normal and what’s cancer.
"Getting the immune system to recognise and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today. If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during the pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people every year in the UK alone."
There are around 48,500 new lung cancer cases in the UK every year, while The American Cancer Society's estimates that there will be 234,580 new cases of lung cancer in the US this year.
It's said that less than 10 percent of those who develop the disease live for longer than a decade - something which the LungVax project is hoping to change.
While it will help smokers in particular potentially not develop lung cancer, the best option is to still ditch the cigarettes as a means of not getting it.
Nearly 75 percent of lung cancers are believed to stem from damage caused to the lung from smoking.
"LungVax will not replace stopping smoking as the best way to reduce your risk of lung cancer," Professor Mariam Jamal-Hanjani of University College London and the Francis Crick Institute.
"But it could offer a viable route to preventing some of the earliest stage cancers from emerging in the first place."
Researchers are optimistic that the groundbreaking vaccine could cover around 90 percent of all lung cancers.
The two main types of lung cancer are small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Another less common type of lung cancer is called carcinoid, according to the American Lung Association.
Niamh Shackleton