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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

Here, it's not really the harmful virus doing good, but some bit of immunological magic that it put into motion. Viruses just as often cause lasting immunological and other harm. It'd be best to figure out what this response is, so we could put it in a drug.

Indeed, another virus -- Epstein-Barr-- caused the lymphoma in the first place.

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Not sure if they still do it this way, but some thirty years back we use to treat B-cells with Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) to cause them to immortalize. You basically shredded the red blood cells and hit the white blood cells with a heavy concentration of EBV. From there, you would look for antibody production for what you were after and then isolate those cells as they replicated.

I wonder if a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 might trigger the same response from the immune system.

With mRNA, vaccines could be much easier to create and could have an interesting side effects.

Biontech was actually founded to use mRNA "vaccines" to mark tumor cells for your immune system, so that your immune system starts attacking the tumor cells. It was never the plan to produce actual vaccines against viral diseases, but due to their research, they were perfectly positioned to do so, when the pandemic struck.

AFAIK this is somewhat incorrect. Biotech switched to vaccine focus before SARS2 and the reason for the rapid development was the groundwork done for a SARS(1) vaccine.

It is also worth noting, the mRNA part wasn't the innovative technology, but the nano lipid vehicle allowing immune evasion and cell fusion.

Because of that, the SARS2 pandemic fast tracked the tech for numerous targets and will benefit cancer medicine as well as future vaccine developments.

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