Human Testing of Personalized Cancer Cure Started in USA

Фото: Depositphotos

Medical startup Modern began testing personalized cancer drugs in humans.

The first patient was 67-year-old American Glenda Clover with lung cancer, reports Bloomberg.

100 scientists worked on the preparation of the drug for it for 6 weeks. According to the idea of ​​the researchers, the injected medicine should teach her body to cope with the disease on its own.

6 weeks ago researchers from Modern they took a one cubic millimeter tumor sample from her. This started the process of making a vaccine that will teach a woman's body to make substances that can beat cancer. The vaccine will work only for Clover, because it was created according to its genome - for other people, the process will have to be repeated anew.

Scientists studied the patient’s tumor, identifying signs that were unique to it. Based on them, the system programmed a special block of DNA, which was then transcribed into mRNA - a sequence of instructions for the body. Based on these instructions, the body must learn to detect cancer and fight it. Glenda Clover is the first and so far only test subject.

The idea of ​​the company is to treat diseases without drugs. Instead of this Modern wants to teach the human body to deal with them independently. The company's methodology is based on the use of messenger RNA (mRNA), which acts as a molecular courier. Entering the body, mRNA causes the human body to produce the missing proteins, due to the lack of which this or that disease has developed. Earlier, a startup has already conducted clinical trials that have shown the effectiveness of this method. But testing of personalized cancer therapy in humans is performed for the first time.

Director General Modern Stefan Bansel says that all this became real thanks to the fall in the cost of gene sequencing. At the beginning of the century, for sequencing the entire human gene, we would have to pay several million dollars, today this procedure will cost $ 2000. Such a dramatic change allows you to make personal medicine not only affordable, but also cost-effective for those involved in it.

Now Modern It is considered one of the most expensive biotech startups in the United States and is estimated at $ 5 billion. The startup was founded in 2010 year and since then has attracted more than $ 1,9 billion investments. One of the first investors of the project performed DARPA (Advanced Research Projects Management, United States Department of Defense), investing more than $ 24 million in 2013 in a startup.

Modern is not the first company to engage in such research. Previously the company Dendreon made a personalized prostate cancer vaccine. The treatment cost thousands of $ 93, and the company, having failed to make money on it, went bankrupt in 2014.

therefore Modernperhaps the first startup to make huge profits from it. Now the company is already planning an IPO in the coming years.

In this case, Modern during its existence, has been subjected to diversified criticism. In particular, many experts believethat genome sequencing today is useless in the field of cancer treatment. They argue that there are no standards in this area, chaos reigns, which ultimately reduces all advantages to nothing. According to a study conducted on the basis of interviews with 132 oncologists, 36% of them consider genetic tests to be useless at the moment. And 61% of respondents are confident that they will benefit less than a quarter of patients.

At the same time, scientists are optimistic and believe that the time for such tests simply did not come: 89% of oncologists are confident that in the coming 10 years, DNA tests will be useful in the treatment of cancer.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Cash money: US cures hopeless cases of cancer

Silicon Valley start-ups against death are gaining popularity

Why Americans treat cancer in Cuba

Rating of the most common deadly diseases in different states of the USA

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.