The head of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency, Veronika Skvortsova, announced that the Russian mRNA vaccine "Oncorna" can be used in the early stages of colorectal cancer treatment.
Skvortsova explained that the Oncorna vaccine can be used in the early stages of treatment if tests prove the instability of short tandem repeats (microsatellites) in the tumor.
The Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency received approval last April for the clinical use of the vaccine.
Oncorna is used to treat adult patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have received two or more approved anticancer therapies. Immune checkpoint inhibitors can also be used concomitantly in patients with high tumor mutation rates.
Skvortsova emphasized that the vaccine is a personalized treatment designed to stimulate a specific immune response against tumors, noting that it is the first Russian domestic vaccine for colorectal cancer based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.
The Russian official had previously announced that the colorectal cancer vaccines OncoPept and Oncorna had shown good tolerability in patients and no significant side effects had been recorded. She also noted that 27 patients in Russia had become eligible to receive the OncoPept vaccine, while two patients were currently receiving treatment with it.
