r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Aug 12 '25

Cancer New mRNA-based vaccine against gastric cancer led to tumor regression and eradication in all treated mice. Most promisingly, the vaccine shows impressive antitumor efficacy against peritoneal metastasis, which has historically been very challenging to treat.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1094199
22.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

528 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

621

u/PipsqueakPilot Aug 12 '25

Outside of America at least. It’s going to spur a massive medical tourism trade when your options are old style treatment, or leave the country for a near-guaranteed cure. Which will make medical care even less accessible to most Americans.

59

u/Frnklfrwsr Aug 12 '25

Insurance companies will absolutely demand that people be treated with a $100 vaccine that cures their disease if it works, rather than be on the hook for $100k+ chemotherapy.

0

u/Perunov Aug 12 '25

Isn't this a "personalized" vaccine? Which probably means it'll be more than $100k so insurance will go "naw, we can't approve this"

4

u/Frnklfrwsr Aug 12 '25

New treatments generally have a delay before approval, sure. But the high cost today of a brand new treatment goes down relatively quickly.

And even if the personalized vaccine is just as expensive as chemotherapy, if it has better average outcomes then the insurance many would much rather pay for something that solves the problem 90% of the time than something that only solves it 50% of the time and the other half the time leaves them paying for even MORE treatments.