Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest forms of cancer , with fewer than 13 per cent of patients surviving beyond five years after diagnosis. Unlike cancers that benefit from routine screening methods such as colonoscopies or mammograms, pancreatic cancer has no standard early-detection test, and symptoms often emerge only after the disease has reached an advanced stage. Treatment options are limited and only about 20 per cent of cases are considered operable. Now imagine a vaccine custom-built just for the patient, designed to teach their own body to fight off cancer. That’s exactly what researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center have done. They developed an experimental, individualized therapeutic cancer vaccine that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to treat pancreatic cancer. Messenger RNA is a molecule that carries genetic instructions from DNA to help in protein synthesis.…