One of the most promising avenues toward new cancer treatments are vaccines, therapies designed to prompt an immune response against a patient’s tumors. Many rely on the same mRNA technology that built the Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and BioNTech. So when the federal government announced it was ending major funding of mRNA vaccines, cancer researchers and patients began to wonder what that might mean for them.

The Tuesday evening announcement by the Health and Human Services Department said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority was terminating nearly $500 million in grants supporting development of mRNA vaccines for flu, Covid, or other infectious diseases.

STAT spoke with several cancer vaccine experts, all of whom said that the cancellations didn’t appear to ext

See Full Page