Comment by arrosenberg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arrosenberg | Hacker News Reader

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It sounds like you are conflating the antiviral implementation with what the mRNA technology itself is doing. mRNA acts as a blueprint for proteins. Your body has tRNA translation complexes that "read" the mRNA and appropriate the correct amino acid to add to the protein chain. Here is a more detailed description - translation begins about halfway down with the UGCAs: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/translation-dna-to...

So basically the mRNA tech is a means of delivering protein blueprints for in vivo production using your bodies natural machinery. In the case of COVID-19, this was used to manufacture spike protein, which attracts the body's immune response.

I'm not an expert on the best way to use the tech with cancer, but I could imagine a number of different approaches - targeted inducing of cell death, "painting the target" for chemo drugs, making things like monoclonal (designer) antibodies in-vivo, etc. The silver bullet is that it eliminates all of the complexity of creating and storing advanced biologics outside the body. Now you just deliver a bit of code and your body does it's thing.

> the correct protein to add to the chain.

Slight error: it adds an amino acid to the chain. The chain itself is/will fold into a protein.

That is true, thanks for the correction.

> I could imagine a number of different approaches - targeted inducing of cell death, "painting the target" for chemo drugs, making things like monoclonal (designer) antibodies in-vivo, etc.

The article does explicitly call it a "cancer vaccine" (direct quote from the researcher) and says "the same principle [as the COVID-19 vaccine] can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumours".

That's more specific than sneaking in with mRNA to get the body to produce something. It definitely sounds like whatever it is, it gets the immune system involved. It seems fair to ask exactly how it does this.

Scientists are already showing some promising results using the immune system against tumors. See for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pembrolizumab

The promise of mRNA is the potential to prompt the body to produce the therapeutic antibodies itself, rather than produce them externally and injecting regularly.

> That's more specific than sneaking in with mRNA to get the body to produce something.

No, it really isn't more than that. You could send mRNA code into the body that produces a designer antibody that is specific to the cancer a patient has (similar to CAR-T, Keytruda, etc.), or you could design mRNA that specifically causes cancer cells to express antigens that attract the immune system. I'm obviously oversimplifying a pinnacle of human achievement, but on paper it should work that way.

Are cancer cells distinct from other cells?

For certain definitions of distinct, yes. Not as distinct as a bacteria cell vs. a human cell, so you have to be more careful selecting a target. For example, antibiotics and chemotherapy both affect cell reproduction, but antibiotics have fewer major side-effects than chemotherapy - the targets on bacteria aren't present on human cells (though they are sometimes present in the good bacteria in your gut). Chemo targets cells that use the same mechanisms as health cells, thus the side effects. Since cancers are driven by mutations at the genetic level, the goal would be to find a specific mutated site (or a combination of sites) to target that would allow specific delivery of drugs or markers or whatever.

If you can find specific sites, you can design a complimentary piece of RNA code to bind it and allow the drug delivery mechanism to do it's thing. Way fewer side effects versus systemic delivery.

To a certain extent because they need to consume vast amounts of resources. It's not perfect though so it's generally assumed that every type of chemotherapy has collateral damage of some sort as regular cells also get accidentally killed.

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