Cancer Vaccines are the NIH's Next Big Bet

A new public-private partnership is being planned that involves the NIH, the nonprofit Foundation for the NIH, researcher, patients and advocacy groups, philanthropies, and pharma and biotech companies, all working together to use new vaccine technologies, such as mRNA vaccines, to conquer cancer.

The October 9, 2026 article in the New York Times, written by Gina Kolata and titled "Cancer Vaccines are the NIH's Next Big Bet", describes the vaccine initiative, and quotes more than one enthusiastic participant who believe that new technologies and a collaborative approach can finally do what scientists have been trying to do for some time--harness a patient's own immune system to attack their tumors, while leaving the healthy cells intact. 

Initial studies are promising--melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and even glioblastoma, a particularly resistant type of brain cancer, have all shown encouraging results, according to Dr. Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute which is part of the partnership.

One vaccine study stands out because it was large enough to show definitive results. Merck and Moderna reported in August that a vaccine against melanoma both increased the time before reoccurence and increased the time before the cancer spread. 

The partnership is using lessons learned from the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, although the timeline will be longer. The ultimate goal, according to Dr. Stacey Adam, a senior clinical officer at the Foundation for the N.I.H, is that "in seven to 10 years, anyone who walks into a doctor's office can get a vaccine." While that is longer than it took to develop the Covid vaccine, it is still faster than the likely 8-15 years it could take without the partnership.

Image Description: Killer T cells surround a cancer cell
Image Credit: Alex Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott Schwartz and Gillian Griffiths, National Institutes of Health