MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russian scientists are close to creating cancer vaccines that could soon be available to patients.
Putin said in televised comments that “we are very close to the creation of so-called cancer vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs of the new generation”.
“I hope that soon they will be effectively used as methods of individual therapy,” he added at the Moscow Forum on Future Technologies.
Putin did not specify what types of cancer the proposed vaccines would target or how.
A number of countries and companies are working on cancer vaccines. Last year, the British government signed an agreement with German company BioNTech to start clinical trials providing “personalized cancer treatment”, with the aim of reaching 10,000 patients by 2030.
Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck & Co are developing an experimental cancer vaccine that a mid-stage study showed cut the chance of recurrence or death from melanoma — the deadliest skin cancer — in half after three years of treatment.
There are currently six licensed vaccines against human papillomavirus (HPV), which the World Health Organization says causes many types of cancer, including cervical cancer, as well as hepatitis B vaccine (HBV), which can lead to liver cancer.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Russia developed its own Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 and sold it to a number of countries, although at home it encountered widespread public reluctance to get vaccinated.
Putin himself said that he took Sputnik in an attempt to reassure people of its effectiveness and safety.
