Pull ups for prevention

Cancer prophylactics have largely been overshadowed by therapeutics for as long as we have been targeting the illness. This however, was for good reason. Conventional preventive vaccinations for cancer had not made sense for a long time, except in those cases targeting viral agents (HPV and Hep C).  

The rationale for this was two-fold

1. We simply didn’t know what to target!
2. There wasn’t a perceived benefit-over-cost use case.

Regarding the first reason, as scientists develop better predictive computational methods, they find that there indeed are potential non-neo-antigen targets (general, non-specific cancer targets). Alongside the development of next-gen sequencing methods, and the discovery and validation of a plethora of non-MHC-specific TCRs. 

Regarding the second reason, it’s a common argument that people are averse to prophylactics without a truly tangible benefit. Even in the case of SARS-COV-2, a virus for which it made immediate practical sense to vaccinate against, there was hesitancy among many who held the belief that ‘it won’t get to me’, or ‘even if it gets to me, it won’t affect my life significantly’. Thus, in the case of cancer, an illness which almost no one believes that they would acquire, we would likely see this hesitancy magnified even further. However, it’s important to note that general population cancer acquisition rates are increasing, and as such there is a great use case for cancer prophylactics. Cancer rates are expected to rise by 80% by the middle of the century according to the WHO. The NCI in the United States also reports that around 40% of the population will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime. It’s time we start treating cancer in much the same way we treat acquireable pathogens.