Real Science: Get to Know It

There is a new development in vaccine therapy that is in its early stages, but of such potential impact for treating cancer that it must here be mentioned for its readership example: why we as readers must always follow the scientists, hard though that may be at times, and not be sidetracked by uninformed nonsense elsewhere. Science is often not casual reading, so this is a reader’s challenge, beyond just reading for pleasure.

It is not that scientists are always right. They are not. But scientific methodology, complex though it is, is always the right way to test ideas and models. The vaccine therapy subject for today comes at a time when certain non-scientists, without substance, are trying to turn vaccine science in particular on its head. They cannot, if you as reader do not let them.

The research of which I speak is being done at the University of Florida College of Medicine and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. It is an October 22, 2025 feature story for public consumption at the University of Florida Health site at: https://ufhealth.org/news/2025/study-finds-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-sparks-immune-response-to-fight-cancer. The author is Michelle Jaffee, and the story title is “ Study Finds COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Sparks Immune Response to Fight Cancer.”

The National Human Genome Research Institute gives this as its definition for mRNA, where RNA is the acronym for ribonucleic acid: “Messenger RNA (abbreviated mRNA) is a type of single-stranded RNA involved in protein synthesis. mRNA is made from a DNA template during the process of transcription [copying genetic sequences]. The role of mRNA is to carry protein information from the DNA in a cell’s nucleus to the cell’s cytoplasm (watery interior), where the protein-making machinery reads the mRNA sequence and translates each three-base codon into its corresponding amino acid in a growing protein chain.”

So, that is as manageable as it gets for those of us who are neither biochemists or molecular biologists.

The importance of the UF announcement is that patients receiving COVID mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy drugs for advanced skin or lung cancer experienced an immune system “wake up.” They lived significantly longer than patients who did not get the “wake up.”

By scientific standards, the results are preliminary, even though the roots go back to early studies even with mouse models. They require validation in a well sized, randomized clinical trial with humans, but the promise is so extraordinary: a universal cancer vaccine.

Following peer-review scientific methodology, the work was presented in Berlin at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress on October 22. Also on October 22, it was published in the scientific journal “Nature” with more than twenty co-authors. Yes, this kind of science needs a lot of scientists, senior level to student.

The multi-site announcement has gotten a lot of attention by national media. Yet, again, all of this is but a beginning on a long scientific journey. It is how science works, and an example of how sometimes the promise can be huge even as the long process of proof must still play out, under close scrutiny of the whole scientific world. A lot of patience is needed. Hopefully, I have given you enough now to follow the science.