Science can sometimes feel far removed from everyday life at LHS. We learn about mutations, RNA and the immune system in class, but it can be harder to see how those concepts connect to discoveries happening outside of school—or how those discoveries might eventually affect us.
That’s the idea behind Science and Us, a new series in The Musket’s STEM section. Each article will take a recent development in science or technology and look at it through the perspectives of LHS students and teachers. We’ll cover everything from medicine and biotechnology to AI and robotics, with a focus on what these developments could mean for students our age. So, keep an eye out for future issues!
To start the series, we’re looking at something that connects surprisingly well to topics already taught in LHS biology: personalized cancer vaccines.
What Is a Personalized Cancer Vaccine?
When LHS sophomore Nathan Xu first heard the term “cancer vaccine,” he imagined “a preventive shot like the flu vaccine that stops you from getting the disease in the first place.”
Fellow sophomore Aleks Mishchenko had a similar idea, picturing a uniform drug that could reduce someone’s risk of developing cancer.
The treatment Moderna and Merck are developing works differently, though it might be just as powerful as the two students imagined.
In August, the companies announced positive Phase 3 results for an experimental personalized mRNA treatment for patients with high-risk melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Instead of giving every patient the same treatment, researchers analyze mutations in a patient’s tumor and use them to create a treatment specifically for that person. The goal is to help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells.
LHS biology teacher Jocelyn Sheahan said one common misconception is thinking “that it is a preventative vaccine that people can get to avoid getting cancer completely, not that it is used to target and treat existing cancer.”
Much of the basic science behind the treatment is already familiar to biology students. Sheahan pointed to genetics, mutations, RNA and the immune system as especially important for understanding how personalized medicine works.
For Xu, seeing those concepts used in real medicine makes them feel more relevant.
“Seeing concepts we learn in biology applied to real-world medicine bridges the gap between memorizing textbook diagrams and witnessing class knowledge translate into life-saving innovations,” Xu said.
Will This Become Normal?
Xu expects personalized medicine to become much more common by the time current LHS students are adults.
“By the time we are adults, judging by the speed of the development of such treatments, I think personalized medicine treatment will become normalized,” Xu said.
Xu also said that a treatment designed around his own genetics would make him more confident because it could be more precise.
Mishchenko was more cautious. While he said personalized vaccines have “a lot of potential,” he would still be nervous about relying on a newer technology.
“My confidence would increase as this technology is developed more and becomes more mainstream,” Mishchenko said.
Mishchenko also questioned how quickly personalized medicine could become widely used when treatments have to be designed individually rather than produced as one identical drug for millions of patients.
Sheahan thinks personalized medicine could become common in some areas even if it does not replace traditional medicine entirely.
“There is a good chance personalized medicine will be the norm by the time LHS students are doctors or in the medical field, likely not for everything, but for some cancers or genetic diseases,” Sheahan said.
For students interested in eventually entering fields like medicine or biotechnology, Sheahan recommended becoming comfortable analyzing data, understanding chemistry at the molecular level and reading scientific papers directly rather than only relying on summaries.
Yes, that does mean voluntarily reading scientific papers.
Sheahan also emphasized communication. Future scientists and doctors, she said, will need to explain “complicated information in an easy to understand way” to patients who may not have a science background.
Keeping up with new research is another place to start, along with reading future issues of Science and Us, though I might be slightly biased.
The Bigger Question: Who Gets Access?
Although Xu, Mishchenko and Sheahan had different ideas about how quickly personalized medicine could become normal, all three brought up the same concern: cost and access.
“The bigger question will be the cost and accessibility,” Sheahan said. “How affordable will it be for the average person to actually access these treatments?”
Mishchenko was also most concerned about cost. Even if personalized treatments work well, he questioned how affordable they could become when separate treatments have to be designed and produced for individual patients.
That means creating an effective treatment may only be part of the challenge. The other part is making sure patients can actually receive it.
For now, the Moderna and Merck treatment is still experimental, with questions remaining about long-term results, cost and how widely it could eventually be used. But it gives LHS students a real example of how topics already taught in biology—RNA, mutations, genetics and the immune system—are being used to develop new kinds of medicine.
As Xu put it, “Even if revolutionary medical practices are developed, its impact will be very limited if only a few select people have access to it.”
