The CES 2023 invited Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel and General Catalyst & Stel Life's Residence Executive Stephen Klasko to discuss the future of cancer treatments.
They talked about how the pandemic affected the development of cancer treatments and if there would be new vaccines to prevent cancers.
Moderna CEO: Pandemic Delays Cancer Developments
In the first part of their conversation, Stephen said that the pandemic should have accelerated cancer treatment developments.
(Photo : Screenshot from CES's official livestream )
CES 2023: The Future of Cancer Treatment; Moderna CEO Discusses Why It Wouldn't Be One-Size Fits All
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However, Stephane clarified that most hospitals stop taking new patients for clinical trials.
"People don't realize that in 2020," said Bancel.
He added that they halted registering new patients because they want to protect everyone from COVID-19.
This was not easy for Moderna since cancer studies are more complicated than other medical trials.
He explained that around 12 stages are needed to be completed to know if a cancer vaccine is efficient or not.
Although this is the case, Bancel said that some of them still worked on cancer treatment developments.
Progress in Cancer Treatment Development
Stephane explained how they are developing cancer vaccines.
He said that they send the patient's health data to the cloud AWS. After that, they will compare all the bases and use an AI system to observe around 14 mutations.
The Moderna CEO added that these mutations are the most relevant outside the cancer cell. After that, they will encode these details into different vaccines for different patients.
Once patients take these vaccines, their immune systems will be boosted, preventing the use of other treatments that can damage healthy cells.
Cancer Vaccine that Prevents Cancer?
Moderna's CEO claim that there will be new vaccines for melanoma and other types of vaccines.
Bancel said these vaccines could be approved in the next five years. However, Stephane added that they are considering exploring liquid biopsy.
This is because cancers don't usually show extreme symptoms. Using liquid biopsy, health experts can identify cancer cells that are not commonly present in the human body.
This shows that cancer treatments will not be just vaccines. Patients will see new types of medical treatments based on the result of their liquid biopsies.
"There's something to be done with liquid biopsy. You can now how blood works and see early signs of cancer," explained Bancel.
All the details discussed by Bancel and Klasko showed that cancer treatments will be more personalized in the future instead of being "one-size fits all."
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