Scientists are aiming to create a vaccine against lung cancer.
In a world-first, researchers from the University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute and University College London (UCL) have used technology similar to the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to create ‘LungVax’ for those at high risk of getting lung cancer.
LungVax is a vaccine which activates the immune system to kill cancer cells and stop lung cancer using a strand of DNA.
The vaccine then trains the immune system to recognise ‘red flag’ proteins in lung cancer cells – known as neoantigens – and kill them.
Those neoantigens appear on the surface of the cell due to the cancer-causing mutations within the cell’s DNA.
From Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation, the team has been granted up to £1.7m to develop 3,000 doses of the vaccine.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘The science that successfully steered the world out of the pandemic could …