Vaccine Pioneer Sees mRNA Technology’s Limits in Treating Cancer

One of the pioneers in messenger RNA vaccines sees limits to their effectiveness against cancers, even after a successful trial raised expectations for the technology.

Tumor-fighting mRNA vaccines will probably be most useful for patients with only a few cancer cells, said Katalin Kariko, a former BioNTech SE executive and University of Pennsylvania researcher whose work helped lay the foundation for the technology’s success in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Katalin Kariko

Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg

The vaccines work by delivering instructions for the body to produce antigens that direct the immune system to zero in on cancer cells and kill them. The resulting response, however, ...