A groundbreaking new vaccine is in the works that could help prevent people from developing cancer.

The vaccine will reportedly use similar technology that created the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

‘LungVax’ is being created by scientists from the University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute and University College London (UCL).

Andrew Brookes/Getty Stock

There are hopes that vaccine will activate the immune system to kill cancer cells attributed to lung cancer.

In a positive development, the project has been granted £1.7 million ($2,139,225) by charities Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation.

This will go towards creating 3,000 of the potentially lifesaving jabs.

The jab will work by using a strand of DNA which trains the immune system to recognise ‘red flag’ proteins in lung cancer cells and kill them, Sky News reports.

Speaking about the project, Professor Tim Elliott, research lead for LungVax, explained, as per Cancer Research UK: “Cancer is a disease of our own bodies and it’s hard for the immune system to distinguish between what’s normal and what’s cancer.

“Getting the immune system to recognise and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today. If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during the pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people every year in the UK alone.”

Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Stock

There are around 48,500 new lung cancer cases in the UK every year, while The American Cancer Society’s estimates that there will be 234,580 new cases of lung cancer in the US this year.

It’s said that less than 10 percent of those who develop the disease live for longer than a decade – something which the LungVax project is hoping to change.

While it will help smokers in particular potentially not develop lung cancer, the best option is to still ditch the cigarettes as a means of not getting it.

Nearly 75 percent of lung cancers are believed to stem from damage caused to the lung from smoking.

Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Stock

“LungVax will not replace stopping smoking as the best way to reduce your risk of lung cancer,” Professor Mariam Jamal-Hanjani of University College London and the Francis Crick Institute.

“But it could offer a viable route to preventing some of the earliest stage cancers from emerging in the first place.”

Researchers are optimistic that the groundbreaking vaccine could cover around 90 percent of all lung cancers.

The two main types of lung cancer are small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Another less common type of lung cancer is called carcinoid, according to the American Lung Association.

A new vaccine treatment for skin cancer melanoma has shown extremely promising results in a new study.

The overall survival rate with the vaccine was indicated as being 96 percent according to the research.

The vaccine was developed by Moderna and Merck and Co, and was announced alongside the therapy Keytruda.

It showed both improved survival chances in patients, as well as a durable efficacy.

The trial was with 157 patients over the course of a two-and-half-year period.

It found that melanoma patients who had received the vaccination combination had an overall survival rate of 96 percent.

This was compared to 90.2 percent for people who only took Keytruda.

When it came to recurrence, when someone’s cancer came back, around 75 percent of the patients who had the vaccine did not have a recurrence.

Meanwhile, 55.6 percent of the patients who only had Keytruda did not have a recurrence.

The treatment has been tested against melanoma. (Peter Dazeley / Getty)

A report in December went on to find that there was a risk reduction of 49 percent for recurrence or death among patients who were on the combination compared to just Keytruda.

This had a median follow up of just under three years.

While it’s currently only being tested for melanoma, it could have applications in other forms of cancer.

Professor Georgina Long, co-director of the Melanoma Institute Australia, told Sky News: “This has the power to transform cancer treatments across the world.

“The trial results are transformative for not only the treatment of melanoma, but they set the stage and benchmark for other cancers.

“This phase III trial is the first of its kind and is one of the single biggest developments, not only in melanoma, but the whole cancer field.

The treatment has been shown to have a big impact on survival rates. (Image source RF/Andrew Brookes)

“Our next step is to refine who gets what immunotherapy before surgery, as some patients will need combination and others will not.”

Merck and Moderna have been collaborating since 2016, and are also carrying out a study examining the late stage of the combination of Keytruda and the new vaccine.

But how does a ‘vaccine for cancer work?

A regular vaccine infects a patient with a weakened version of a virus to build immunity, but cancer is not a virus, it’s when cells mutate and multiply out of control.

So this can’t be like those sorts of vaccine, and is called mRNA vaccine technology.

To treat cancer, the vaccine carries instructions for someone’s cells to make a specific protein.

This is different for different people, and can be used to prevent the kinds of mutations which cause cancer.

A whole continent which has gone walk-a-bout for nearly 400 years?

Granted, it sounds pretty wild, particularly given how much we know about our planet already.

However, there’s one particular area of our globe that has remained a bit of an unknown – even to scientists – and it’s within the deep oceans of the South Pacific.

How does a continent end up missing? I hear you ask (Getty Stock Image)

The waters surrounding New Zealand have intrigued scientists for years and in particular, the discovery of a new continent called Zealandia – or Te Riu-a-Māui, in the Māori dialect – in 2017.

Zealandia is the planet’s eighth continent with the majority of it lying just a kilometer underwater.

First came the discovery, then followed by in-depth research by a group of scientists to try and unpack the continent’s secrets.

To get these answers, a team of 32 scientists from 12 different countries drilled into the rock and studied what they found.

Zealandia, Earth’s eighth continent (Ulrich Lange/Wikimedia Commons)

Jamie Allan, program director in the US National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, the team leading the 2017 project, said: “Zealandia, a sunken continent long lost beneath the oceans, is giving up its 60 million-year-old secrets through scientific ocean drilling.

“This expedition offered insights into Earth’s history, ranging from mountain-building in New Zealand to the shifting movements of Earth’s tectonic plates to changes in ocean circulation and global climate.”

The ambitious plan was part of a nine-week voyage that saw researchers drill deep into a seabed to sample rocks that comprise the eighth continent.

At six separate sites, the team drilled to depths of 1,250 meters and collected a whopping 2,500 meters worth of sediment and rock samples.

Scientists decided to drill into the continent (Getty Stock Image)

To keep the science relatively simple, the voyage recorded how the geology, volcanism, and climate of Zealandia have changed over the last 70 million years.

The results from the 2017 study were actually quite surprising, indicating Earth’s eighth continent had a very different past.

Researchers found the remains of hundreds of fossils, covering a wide array of species that thrive in all different types of settings and climates.

It hinted that part of Zealandia is rather different to the subaquatic environment we all know about today.

Rupert Sutherland, co-author of the study, said at the time: “Big geographic changes across northern Zealandia, which is about the same size as India, have implications for understanding questions such as how plants and animals dispersed and evolved in the South Pacific.

“The discovery of past land and shallow seas now provides an explanation. There were pathways for animals and plants to move along.”

Doctors around the world have issued a warning over an ‘eye-bleeding disease’ as nine suspected cases have recently been reported, including eight deaths.

Global health chiefs from the World Health Organization (WHO) have warned of cases of the Marburg virus in Tanzania, Africa.

However, the Tanzanian government has denied a suspected Marburg outbreak.

The life-threatening hemorrhagic fever is passed on through bodily fluids, contaminated objects or infected animals, though it is not easily transmitted.

An illustration of the Marbug virus (Getty Stock Image)

What are the symptoms of the Marburg virus?

Among its horrendous and abrupt symptoms, suffers can bleed internally or from their eyes, ears and mouth, yet with no vaccines to cure the disease, it remains largely untreatable.

Other symptoms include fever, muscle pain, rashes, diarrhoea, stomach pain, vomiting and headaches that become increasingly worse, as well as a ‘ghost-like’ appearance with deep-set eyes.

In the initial stages, doctors warn it is difficult to diagnose Marburg as it appears similar to other tropical diseases such as Ebola and malaria.

Concerns raised

Officials raised concerns earlier this month after the sudden illness affected six people and killed five of them, with experts believing Marburg was the cause.

The WHO has sent its expert teams to the north-eastern Kagera region, in the districts Biharamulo and Muleba, where all of the reported cases have so far been recorded.

However, medics are warning the virus could potentially spread to neighboring countries, such as Rwanda and Burundi, and have issued a warning for travellers since it has a case-fatality ratio of up to 88 percent.

It could have spread from fruit bats (Getty Stock Image)

‘Low global risk’

The WHO emphasised: “The global risk is currently assessed as low. There is no confirmed international spread at this stage, although there are concerns about potential risks.”

The news of its spread to Tanzania comes as a Marburg outbreak in Rwanda came to an end just a month ago after infecting 66 people and killing 15.

An estimated 80 percent of the infected were healthcare workers but the country received international praise for how it handled the crisis and its low death rate.

In comparison, Tanzania’s Bukoba district struggled to grapple with an outbreak that lasted for almost two months in March last year.

On January 14, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on Twitter that further cases could come to light in the next few days ‘as disease surveillance improves’.

WHO officials also said in a separate statement: “The source of the outbreak is currently unknown. The delayed detection and isolation of cases, coupled with ongoing contact tracing, indicates lack of a full information of the current outbreak.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns more cases could come to light (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The experts say they predict ‘more cases’ will be identified with the risk considered ‘high’ due to ‘Kagera region’s strategic location as a transit hub, with significant cross-border movement of the population to Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’.

The statement continued: “Reportedly, some of the suspected cases are in districts near international borders, highlighting the potential for spread into neighbouring countries.

“Marburg is not easily transmissible. In most instances, it requires contact with the body fluids of a sick patient presenting with symptoms or with surfaces contaminated with these fluids.

“However, it cannot be excluded that a person exposed to the virus may be traveling.”

Tanzania’s response

Tanzania’s Health Minister Jenista Mhagama has since claimed that after samples were analysed, all suspected cases were found negative for Marburg virus.

“As of 15th January 2025, laboratory results for all suspected individuals were negative for Marburg virus,” she said, before saying they ‘would like to assure the international organisations, including WHO that we shall always keep them up to date with ongoing development’.