Speaker: Professor Cameron Alexander

Title: From cancer vaccines to Covid-19 and back - why vaccines for the pandemic may benefit future cancer patients

Abstract: The recent deployment of vaccines for Covid-19 has occurred at unprecedented speed, and many have asked how this is possible when most recent vaccines or drugs have taken many years in development. One of the reasons is that some types of vaccine, such as those based on RNA, have in fact, been trialled for a number of years already, but primarily in late-stage cancers. In this talk we will consider how the 'plug-and-play' nature of RNA-based therapeutics allows them to be revised quickly for multiple diseases, and that their widespread adoption for Covid-19 might accelerate trials in other diseases.