There are so many cancers and so many things that can work in concert or independently to increase a person's cancer risk—to say nothing of the sheer scope and scale of cancer as an epidemic—that the idea of a universal cancer vaccine seems pretty far-fetched. Hell, given the vast and increasingly effective ecology of cancer treatments, a vaccine doesn't even seem fair (especially if you happen to be a pharmaceutical corporation pushing those often extremely expensive treatments). Nonetheless, a universal cancer vaccine is something being actively pursued and it may prove to be attainable after all. In a paper published
Wednesday in Nature, researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University describe the development of a potential vaccine based on the immune system's natural responses to viral infection. In early experiments based on mouse tumor models and three human patients with advanced melanomas, the vaccine, which essentially consists of nanoscale poison darts with of RNA payloads, was able to induce specific anti-tumor immune responses.

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