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mRNA therapies and mRNA vaccines in cancer

mRNA imageMore than 30 years ago Jon A. Wolff demonstrated the idea of nucleic acid-encoded drugs by direct injecting in vitro transcribed mRNA in mice. Recent technological innovations such as increased stability, translation and delivery methods have enabled messenger RNAs to become a promising therapeutic tool. Tumor antigens are highly variable across different individuals; therefore mRNA represents an attractive approach because it can be customized to specific genetic defects found in an individual’s cancer cells. Developed and published by Molecular Cancer, this series aims to highlight significant findings and recent advances in mRNA vaccines and mRNA-based therapies in the fight against cancer.

Image from Wang, Y., Zhang, Z., Luo, J. et al. mRNA vaccine: a potential therapeutic strategy. Mol Cancer 20, 33 (2021). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/s12943-021-01311-z

  1. Synthetic mRNA provides a template for the synthesis of any given protein, protein fragment or peptide and lends itself to a broad range of pharmaceutical applications, including different modalities of cancer...

    Authors: Jan D. Beck, Daniel Reidenbach, Nadja Salomon, Ugur Sahin, Özlem Türeci, Mathias Vormehr and Lena M. Kranz
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:69
  2. The m6A RNA methylation is the most prevalent internal modification in mammalian mRNAs which plays critical biological roles by regulating vital cellular processes. Dysregulations of the m6A modification due to a...

    Authors: Mohammad Burhan Uddin, Zhishan Wang and Chengfeng Yang
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:61
  3. Lung cancer (LC) is a heterogeneous disease consisting mainly of two subtypes, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Despite re...

    Authors: Parvez Khan, Jawed Akhtar Siddiqui, Imayavaramban Lakshmanan, Apar Kishor Ganti, Ravi Salgia, Maneesh Jain, Surinder Kumar Batra and Mohd Wasim Nasser
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:54
  4. Neural tumors can generally be divided into central nervous system tumors and peripheral nervous tumors. Because this type of tumor is located in the nerve, even benign tumors are often difficult to remove by ...

    Authors: Yiyang Zheng, Yanyan Luo, Xixi Chen, Huiting Li, Baojun Huang, Baofeng Zhou, Liqing Zhu, Xianhui Kang and Wujun Geng
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:49
  5. mRNA vaccines have become a promising platform for cancer immunotherapy. During vaccination, naked or vehicle loaded mRNA vaccines efficiently express tumor antigens in antigen-presenting cells (APCs), facilit...

    Authors: Lei Miao, Yu Zhang and Leaf Huang
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:41
  6. mRNA vaccines have tremendous potential to fight against cancer and viral diseases due to superiorities in safety, efficacy and industrial production. In recent decades, we have witnessed the development of di...

    Authors: Yang Wang, Ziqi Zhang, Jingwen Luo, Xuejiao Han, Yuquan Wei and Xiawei Wei
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2021 20:33