Murashko said that the Russians are already receiving oncology vaccines for compulsory medical insurance

The first patients in Russia are already receiving individual oncological vaccines and CAR-T-cell cancer therapy under the MHI program, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said at the forum “Patient-oriented innovations: practice and realities”.

The program of state guarantees is also expanding: breakthrough individual therapeutic vaccines and CAR-T cell therapy technologies have become available to patients in the OMS system. The first patients today receive such treatment for free, he said.

Oncological vaccines and an innovative method of CAR-T immunotherapy for cancer were included in the MHI program in April.

CAR-T therapy is a method of cell therapy in which a patient's immune cells are modified by attaching an artificial receptor to them, aimed at destroying a certain type of tumor cells. Such therapy helps patients for whom chemoradiotherapy has been ineffective.

In April, the first patient received a personalized antitumor mRNA vaccine "Neonkovak" for the treatment of melanoma of the skin, said the Ministry of health.

According to the director of the National Institute of Radiology of the Ministry of Health of Russia Andrei Kaprin, the next after the melanoma cancer vaccine will be a drug for small cell lung cancer.

In August, the scientific director of the Gamalei Research Institute Alexander Ginzburg reported on a ready-made prototype vaccine against non-small cell lung cancer, which affects smokers and is one of the most common types of cancer.