The COVID-19 mRNA-based vaccines that saved 2.5 million lives globally^[1] during the pandemic could help spark the immune system to fight cancer. This is the surprising takeaway of a new study that we and our colleagues published in the journal Nature^[2].

While developing mRNA vaccines for patients with brain tumors in 2016, our team, led by pediatric oncologist Elias Sayour^[3], discovered that mRNA can train immune systems to...