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Show Me the Science with Luke O'NeillAuthor: Newstalk Language: en-ie Genres: Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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The Science of Cancer and the Immune System
Episode 244
Thursday, 27 November, 2025
This week, Professor Luke digs into one of the biggest questions in cancer research: how to train the immune system to hunt tumours. Immunotherapy already works in cancers like melanoma and lung cancer — but only 20–30% of patients respond. A major new study in Nature Medicine may shift that. It tracked more than a thousand patients and found that people who’d had the Covid-19 vaccine responded twice as well to immunotherapy. Lung cancer patients lived an average 18 months longer; melanoma patients 14 months. Why would a Covid vaccine help? The RNA technology gives the immune system a jolt, boosting interferons — the proteins Luke’s lab studies — which “wake up” tumours that normally hide. Immunotherapy works best on “hot” tumours; the vaccine helps turn “cold” ones hot. Luke explains how checkpoint inhibitors remove the brakes from immune cells, dramatically extending life for some patients, though 70% still don’t benefit. Push the immune system too far and it risks attacking healthy tissue, so reaching even 50% response rates would be a huge win. Luke also recalls how science turned HIV from a death sentence into something people can live with for decades — a reminder of what long-term research can achieve. Which is why he’s dismayed that the US has cut almost half a billion dollars from RNA-vaccine research. Especially when RNA vaccines for malaria and TB are now in development. Immunotherapy isn’t a cure yet — but the science is heating up fast.
