There’s a Vaccine for That—Could mRNA Vaccines be Used to Prevent Cancer Recurrence?

mRNA vaccines came roaring onto the public stage in 2020. In the United States and Europe, two of the vaccines that are being used against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are mRNA vaccines. The scientific community has been talking about the potential of this technology against infectious diseases as well as cancer for several years, but no one thought that the first mRNA vaccines would make such a huge, and public, debut.

One big benefit of mRNA vaccines is the speed at which they can be developed. mRNA vaccines use messenger RNA particles to teach our cells to make a bit of protein, which then triggers our body’s immune response, and it is relatively easy to synthesize large amounts of mRNA in a laboratory. As promising as this sounds for infectious diseases, the application of mRNA vaccines for oncology might be even more exciting.

Could mRNA vaccines be used for personalized cancer vaccines?
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MSI Testing of Tumor Cells for Better Tailored Treatment

3D artistic rendering of mismatch repair. Microsatellite instability (MSI)  which can result from defects in mismatch repair is a biomarker for some cancers

There are as many different cancers as there are people with cancer. Unlike infectious diseases, which are caused by pathogens that are foreign to our bodies (bacteria, viruses, parasites), cancer cells arise from our body—our own cells gone rogue. Because cancer is a dysfunction of a person’s normal cells, every cancer reflects the genetic differences that mark us as individuals. Add to that environmental influences like diet, tobacco use, the microbiome and even occupation, and the likelihood of finding a “single” pharmaceutical cure for cancer becomes virtually impossible.

But, while looking for a single cure for all cancers may not be a fruitful activity, defining a best practice for understanding the genetic and protein biomarkers of individual tumors is proving worthwhile.

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Where Would DNA Sequencing Be Without Leroy Hood?

There have been many changes in sequencing technology over the course of my scientific career. In one of the research labs I rotated in as a graduate student, I assisted a third-year grad student with a manual radioactive sequencing gel because, I was told, “every student should run at least one in their career”. My first job after graduate school was as a research assistant in a lab that sequenced bacterial genomes. While I was the one creating shotgun libraries for the DNA sequencing pipeline, the sequencing reaction was performed using dideoxynucleotides labeled with fluorescent dyes and amplified in thermal cyclers. The resulting fragments were separated by manual loading on tall slab polyacrylamide gels (Applied Biosystems ABI 377s) or, once the lab got them running, capillary electrophoresis of four 96-well plates at a time (ABI 3700s).

Sequencing throughput has only increased since I left the lab. This was accomplished by increasing well density in a plate and number of capillaries for use in capillary electrophoresis, but more importantly, with the advent of the short read, massively parallel next-generation sequencing method. The next-gen or NGS technique decreased the time needed to sequence because many sequences were determined at the same time, significantly accelerating sequencing capacity. Instruments have also decreased in size as well as the price per base pair, a measurement used when I was in the lab. The long-prophesized threshold of $1,000 per genome has arrived. And now, according to a recent tweet from a Nanopore conference, you can add a sequencing module to your mobile device:

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The Power and Potential of Next-Generation Sequencing

DNA in a test tubeNext-generation sequencing (NGS), also known as massively parallel sequencing, is revolutionizing genomic research. NGS technologies have made whole genome sequencing fast and easy, leading to dramatic advances in evolutionary biology and phylogenetics, personalized medicine and forensic science. Why is NGS such a hot topic right now?

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Learning About the $1,000 Genome

Personalized MedicineAt the recent International Symposium on Human Identification, Kevin Davies, the keynote speaker and author of The $1,000 Genome, entertained attendees with a history of human genome sequencing efforts and discussed ways in which the resulting information has infiltrated our everyday lives. Obviously, there is enough material on the subject to fill a book, but I will describe just a few of the high points of his talk here.

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