Russia’s newly developed cancer vaccine has demonstrated high effectiveness in preclinical trials and is now ready for rollout, Veronika Skvortsova, head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency, said on Friday.
The vaccine is currently awaiting approval from the Russian Health Ministry. Speaking to Izvestia on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Skvortsova said the drug showed “excellent results” over three years of preclinical testing, reports RT.
“The trials have proven the safety of the vaccine, including its repeated use, as well as its high efficiency, which was associated with a reduction in tumor size and a slowdown in tumor growth,” she said. In some cancers, she added, the effect reached 60–80%. “Studies have shown an increase in survival, which is also very important.”
Documents for clinical approval were submitted to the Ministry of Health at the end of summer, Skvortsova said. The vaccine will first target colorectal cancer, with treatments for glioblastoma and melanoma to follow, it said.
Developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the drug is an mRNA-based vaccine that uses artificial intelligence to train the patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells.
Institute head Alexander Gintsburg noted that the vaccine follows a unique regulatory framework due to its nature, describing it as “a fundamentally different process from the registration of standard drugs.” Gamaleya, which also developed Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, is now working on an HIV vaccine using the same mRNA technology., the report concluded.
