Cancer vaccine being created by UK scientists could stop disease up to 20 years early
Cancer vaccine being created by UK scientists could stop disease up to 20 years early
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A new partnership between the University of Oxford and GSK aims to develop vaccines against cancer before develop. Scientists are working to create a new cancer vaccine that could “detect the undetectable” and stop the disease up to 20 years before it has the chance to develop.
![[University of Oxford professor Sarah Blagden, who is director of the partnership, said the research was aimed at finding ways to stop the cancer developing]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/27/12/Screenshot-2025-01-27-at-12.18.42-%282%29-copy.jpg)
Pharmaceutical giant GSK and the University of Oxford have teamed up to make a vaccine that targets cells at the pre-cancerous stage. The university has world-leading expertise in the study of pre-cancer biology, such as through identifying and sequencing neoantigens, which are proteins that forms on cancer cells and can be a target for drugs.
Professor Sarah Blagden, who is director of the partnership, said cancer “does not come from nowhere”. “You always imagine it would take about a year or two years to develop in your body but, in fact, we now know that cancers can take up to 20 years, sometimes even more, to develop - as a normal cell transitions to become cancerous,” prof Blagden told BBC’s Radio 4 on Monday.
“We know that actually at that point, most cancers are invisible when they are going through this, what we now call pre-cancer stage. And so the purpose of the vaccine is not to vaccinate against established cancer, but to actually vaccinate against that pre-cancer stage.”.
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