mRNA in the USA!
A major milestone in the fight against cancer
It isn’t often that we get earth-shattering good news these days, but we did last weekend. It’s my pleasure to pass along the news that we may have cured pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the scary ones, even by cancer standards, where every diagnosis is scary. It’s difficult to test for, so by the time you’re diagnosed, it’s often terminal. Treatments have had a low probability of success. Per NBC News, fewer than 13 percent of people with pancreatic cancer live past five years.
Until now.
The big medical news over the weekend was the result of a long-term trial that used an experimental mRNA vaccine to attack pancreatic cancer cells. The trial began in 2019, a year before mRNA vaccines became widely known during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists tailored vaccines to the specific cancer cells in each of 16 patients in the trial. In eight patients, the vaccine triggered immune system cells to attack the invasive cancer cells. Seven of these patients are still alive after four to six years. Of the eight patients whose immune systems did not respond, the median survival time was 3.4 years. Only two were still alive when the announcement was made.
The study represents a giant step forward in the fight against pancreatic cancer, but it is not a panacea. Participants in the trial first had to have surgery to have the tumor removed, but surgery is only possible in about 20 percent of cases. The 50 percent success rate of the experimental vaccine is still long odds, even if it’s much better than no treatment.
While the advancement is important in the fight against pancreatic cancer, this treatment is only the beginning. The same technology shows promise against many other diseases and forms of cancer. There are already vaccines for other forms of cancer in the works, including prostate cancer.
[As an aside, let me point out that the phrase “a cure for cancer” is a bit misleading.] There are many types of cancer, and some of them are more curable than others. There is not likely to ever be a single cure for cancer, but we are likely to see an increasing number of successful treatments for various forms of the disease, that’s why I use the plural term “cures for cancer.” Former Senator Ben Sasse, who announced that he has metastatic pancreatic cancer last December, is reportedly in a separate trial.]
The promise of the new technology is what makes it so ironic and tragic that Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. head up the federal government at this momentous point in medical history. Cancer research was a big target and a big loser in Elon Musk’s DOGE war on federal spending. In the first half of 2025, the Trump Administration cut 1800 grants and $8 billion in cancer research funding. RFKJR’s HHS continued with an emphasis on cutting research into mRNA vaccines, a favorite bogeyman of the anti-vax right, despite their real world successes.
Some anti-vax conspiracy theories are based on a misunderstanding of what mRNA vaccines do. Contrary to popular belief, they do not change your DNA. Rather, as the National Medicine Library explains, mRNA vaccines introduce a protein that corresponds to proteins found in a virus or other foreign cell. The body’s cells then produce antibodies that target the protein, fighting off the foreign cells.
Other conspiracy theories claim that mRNA vaccines cause so-called “turbo cancer,”rather than cure diseases. While it is true that there had been a surge of cancer cases among younger people, the increase predates the advent of mRNA vaccines and is likely due to lifestyle factors. There is no known link between the COVID mRNA vaccines and cancer, “turbo” (which does not exist) or otherwise. In fact, some studies have identified potential benefits from the COVID vaccines in fighting cancer.
A favorite trope of Trump supporters has been, “Trump could cure cancer, and you’d still hate him.” The chances of Trump curing cancer are about the same as the chances of Trump flying to the moon by flapping his arms, but the reality is closer to the opposite. Trump and his cohorts not only did not cure cancer, they cut the funding for numerous promising research programs and undermined public faith in mRNA, a technology that has the potential to remake medicine as we know it. Trump killed cures for cancer, yet his base still loves and trusts him.
There are few areas where MAGA has been so dramatically, tragically wrong as it has been with its opposition to mRNA vaccines and research. Research will go on, but precious time is being lost because of the loss of federal funding. Many scientists will go to other countries where more funding is available, and for many scientists and doctors who are immigrants, to places where there are more friendly immigration policies. They will take their American education and work for our competitors because our government no longer wants immigrants.
A few years might not seem like much, but if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with a fast-moving disease like pancreatic cancer, days matter. The loss of four or more years of research could be the difference between life and death.
Because I frequently beat up on President Trump, I will also give him some credit here. During his first term, Trump signed the Right to Try Act, a law that allows terminal patients access to experimental trials. If a patient is likely to die anyway, they should have the right to try new treatments, even if they are in the testing stage. Give them a shot at life.
Nevertheless, as a two-time cancer patient (read about my experience here), I take it personally that the Administration has made such draconian cuts to such promising programs. That’s especially true since any savings from DOGE have been squandered on spending increases for items like the massive growth of ICE and the war on Iran (more than $1 billion per day). Spending and borrowing have increased under Trump, even as cancer research was thrown under the bus.
It’s a sign of the times that we can get confirmation of the existence of UFOs or a promising new treatment for one of the most deadly strains of cancer, and no one bats an eye. So much for all the old movies in which characters opined that the government couldn’t tell the truth about UFOs without causing a mass panic. I guess we just needed a trumpian dumpster fire as a distraction when they dropped that rhetorical bomb, but the news of the pancreatic cancer vaccine is news that deserves to be celebrated far and wide.
There is mounting evidence that America bet on the wrong horse in 2024, but none so stark as the realization that we chose tariffs and unnecessary wars over cures for cancer. We will have an opportunity to correct that mistake, starting in just a few months. We should fire those members of Congress who offer Trump their unquestioning support and hire those who will restore funding to cancer research projects and rein in an out-of-control president.
We are on the cusp of a tremendous scientific breakthrough that has been dreamed of for generations, but like the old joke about what makes airplanes fly (the answer is “money”), highly technical medical research also takes large piles of cash, and when large piles of cash are required, for better or worse, usually the primary source is the federal government.
If the issue for the midterms is spending to create cures for cancer or deport elderly immigrant grandparents, I’m pretty sure I know what Americans will choose.
VIRGINIA VOTES Virginia voted to redistrict to add Democrat seats in response to Texas’ mid-decade redistricting.
TACO TUESDAY Trump extended the Iran ceasefire indefinitely.
FLU NOT Pete Hegseth announced that US troops would no longer be required to get annual flu vaccinations.
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