GSK has committed £50 million over three years to fund this innovative research program. Scientists will use cutting-edge technology to detect previously undetectable cellular changes in pre-cancerous cells, pinpointing vulnerabilities. This approach marks a significant shift from treating established cancer to preventing its development altogether.
Cancer’s Devastating Impact in the US and UKScientists at the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company GSK have collaborated to develop a revolutionary cancer vaccine. The vaccine aims to prevent cancer up to 20 years before it develops. This collaborative effort targets cells at the pre-cancerous stage when cancer is typically undetectable.
Professor Sarah Blagden, director of the partnership, explains that cancer can take up to two decades to fully develop. During this time, cells undergo a transition from normal to cancerous. By identifying and targeting these transitioning cells, researchers aim to create a vaccine that stops cancer in its tracks long before symptoms appear.
GSK has committed £50 million over three years to fund this innovative research program. Scientists will use cutting-edge technology to detect previously undetectable cellular changes in pre-cancerous cells, pinpointing vulnerabilities. This approach marks a significant shift from treating established cancer to preventing its development altogether.
Cancer’s Devastating Impact in the US and UK
Cancer’s toll in the United States is staggering. The National Cancer Institute reports that in 2024, doctors diagnosed over 2 million new cancer cases. Tragically, 611,720 Americans died from the disease that same year. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer rank among the most common types. Melanoma, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and several others also impact thousands of lives.
In the United Kingdom, the numbers paint an equally grim picture. More than 385,000 people receive a cancer diagnosis each year. Cancer claims approximately 167,000 lives annually across the UK. Researchers at Oxford and GSK aim to reduce these devastating statistics dramatically. Their collaboration focuses on developing a vaccine to prevent cancer from gaining a foothold in the first place. By targeting pre-cancerous changes, they hope to stop the disease before it starts.
The Oxford-GSK Cancer Vaccine Partnership
Prof Blagden explained that cancer doesn’t develop overnight. Normal cells can take up to 20 years or more to turn cancerous. During this lengthy transition, most cancers remain invisible. Researchers call this the “pre-cancer stage.” According to E. Shelley Hwang of Duke University School of Medicine: ‘’Many solid tumors have an identifiable “pre-cancer” stage where groups of cells appear histologically abnormal but have limited potential to progress to the point where they can cause local symptoms, disseminated disease, or death.’’
Cells undergo changes that put them on the path to becoming malignant. However, these changes are not detectable with current screening methods. Oxford and GSK’s vaccine aims to target cells at this early stage. By identifying and acting on pre-cancerous changes, they hope to prevent cancer from developing at all.
Several technological breakthroughs have made this approach possible. “We’re lucky because there have been a huge amount of technical breakthroughs that mean we can …. start to be able to detect the undetectable,” she said. “And from that, we’ve been able to work out what features those cells have as they’re transitioning towards cancer, and so we can design a vaccine speficially targeted towards that,” said Prof Blagden. These advances allow researchers to “detect the undetectable.” The team has determined what features to target by studying cells in the pre-cancer stage. They can then design a vaccine to act on those vulnerabilities specifically. If successful, this approach could revolutionize cancer prevention. Stopping the disease before it starts would save millions of lives worldwide.