UF Health Cancer Center Researcher Showcases a New Vaccine That Can Help Fight Diseases

In this week’s Tech Tuesday, UF Innovate host Bethany Gaffey introduces us to the researcher developing a groundbreaking mRNA vaccine with the potential to fight cancer and infectious diseases.

“What if there was a vaccine for treating cancer? We’re here with a member of UF Health’s Cancer Center to learn more. Dr. Sayour, tell us about your novel vaccine,” said Bethany Gaffer, host of UF Innovate.

“So we’ve developed a brand new vaccine that leverages the groundbreaking mRNA technology to teach the immune system to fight various things like infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and can also be done against cancer,” said Elias Sayour, the Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research in the UF departments of neurosurgery and pediatrics at the University of Florida. He is also a principal investigator of the ribonucleic acid engineering laboratory at the Preston A. Wells, Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy.

“And so we’ve taken the information from cancer in the form of mRNA, and then we’re able to load it in a fat particle in such a way that that particle can be injected intravenously, localized to the immune cells of the patient for teaching that patient’s immune system to fight the RNA of their cancer.

“But for the work that we do, we’re moving this forward into childhood brain cancer. Brain cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in children here in the United States. So we’re quite hopeful that this approach can teach a child’s immune system to fight their cancer, and also that information we think can be used to develop this form of mRNA vaccine technology for all cancer.”

Watch this episode of Tech Tuesday on WCJB TV20.