Why Aren't We Curing Human Cancers like This??

TL;DR

The viral dog cancer vaccine works partly because dog cancers are genetically simpler than human cancers, making them easier immune targets.

Key Points

• 1.- The dog (Rosie, a part-Shar-Pei) had mast cell cancer, a cancer common in dogs due to selective breeding creating genetically homogeneous populations with shared cancer-risk genes.
• 2.- Dog cancers are often driven by a single genetic event, making tumor cells display uniform surface proteins — ideal targets for mRNA vaccines that train the immune system to attack them.
• 3.- Human cancers are far more genetically diverse due to longer lifespans and genetic variety, meaning cancer cell populations have multiple driver mutations, allowing some cells to survive any single targeted treatment.
• 4.- mRNA cancer vaccines ARE being used in humans — pancreatic cancer clinical trials showed survival advantages for some patients, but sequencing-to-vaccine time takes months, likely too long to be optimal.
• 5.- AlphaFold (Google DeepMind's protein-structure AI) played a meaningful role in this process, while ChatGPT-style LLMs were largely irrelevant despite media focus on them.