Category World News

New studies have demonstrated that the immune system can recognize and treat cancer tumours thanks to the mass-produced COVID-19 vaccines created using the mRNA model, which were quickly produced during the global pandemic.

A startling pattern emerged from studies in mice and an analysis of cancer patients’ medical histories after receiving mRNA shots for COVID-19 before beginning immunotherapy for cancer treatment.

This week, researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center presented the findings at the German Congress for Medical Oncology. They also published their findings in Nature, a peer-reviewed journal.

The results, according to the researchers, show that mRNA vaccines not only stop infections but also “wake up” and activate the body’s defense against tumors.

The finding comes at a time when US President Donald Trump’s administration has cut funding for mRNA research.

Why is this being marketed as groundbreaking, then? What does it mean for people who have cancer? And how did this unlikely discovery come about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

An mRNA vaccine is what?

Unlike traditional vaccines, which inject a small strand of genetic code known as “messenger RNA” directly into the body’s cells to activate the immune system’s defense, use weakened or inactive parts of a virus.

The cell interprets this blueprint as an instruction to create a spike protein that resembles the virus and appears on its surface, effectively displaying a red flag that prompts the immune system to launch a defense.

The body then creates antibodies and memory cells trained to recognize and respond to the protein spike if it ever appears again.

How did scientists learn about the association between mRNA and cancer?

This area of research has been ongoing for some time, most recently by paediatric oncologist Elias Sayour, the University of Florida’s Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research.

As the world rushed to vaccinate the populace in large numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to examine the repercussions of mRNA for cancer treatment.

A striking pattern emerged when Sayour’s former student, oncologist Adam Grippin, examined the clinical records of more than 1, 000 patients treated at the MD Anderson Cancer Center between August 2019 and August 2023.

Within 100 days of initiating immunotherapy, those who had the same medical treatment but did not have the vaccine lived significantly longer.

How long did the vaccine last for the vaccine’s use?

If the patient received the vaccine, their median survival rate nearly doubled, increasing from 20.6% to 30.3%.

More remarkable is the improvement in survival in patients with immunologically “cold” tumours, which suggests that the mRNA vaccine appeared to “wake up” the immune system in these harder-to-treat cancers, making “cold” tumors into ones that the immune system could more easily recognize and attack.

The researchers noted that their findings varied depending on a number of variables, including the number of vaccine manufacturers, the dose, and the duration of the immunization.

The researchers also compared the survival rates of a smaller sample of patients receiving immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma, the most advanced skin cancer stage. In the study, 167 patients received mRNA COVID vaccines, compared to 43 who received none.

The median survival time for those who received the vaccine was less than two years. In contrast, the study found that those who were vaccined before starting treatment had not yet reached the median survival point more than three years into the follow-up.

What is the process?

The researchers discovered that mRNA vaccines trigger the body’s defenses by acting as an alarm.

The immune system becomes more alert when the vaccine is administered, increasing its ability to recognize cancer cells that it might otherwise have missed. When these cells are activated, the immune system launches an attack.

However, cancer cells are resilient. They create a protein called PD-L1, which acts as a “hield” for them from the immune system. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors are available that can block this shield.

When the immune system is active and alert, and the cancer’s defenses are weak, Grippin explained, this situation is created when both the vaccine and these drugs are used.

The findings suggest that mRNA vaccines can be used to re-programme immune responses to cancer, despite the researchers’ claims that they are still developing an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms.

What does this mean for people who have cancer?

These observations are preliminary. However, if the study is clinically proven to be accurate, it could have significant effects on cancer treatment.

According to Grippin, “These vaccines have powerful anti-tumour immune responses that are linked to significant increases in cancer patient survival.”

The implications are extraordinary; they could transform oncologic care in its entirety, Sayour said. We could create a better nonspecific vaccine that would essentially be an off-the-shelf, universal cancer vaccine for all cancer patients, to mobilize and reset the immune response.

Grippen, who co-led the study with professor of radiation oncology Steven Lin, announced that his team is launching a Phase 3 clinical trial to verify the study’s initial findings and determine whether COVID mRNA vaccines should be included in patient standard of care.

What results from experiments on mice did scientists discover?

Researchers found that dendritic cells, a type of white blood cell, became more alert when they were injected with an mRNA COVID vaccine directly into a tumour.

When the tumor’s dendritic cells recognized its presence, they released signals that enticed T cells to attack it. This helped some mice stop the cancer from spreading.

There is, however, a significant catch. Not everyone who has cancer-fighting T cells is naturally immune. Some people’s immune systems can identify a tumor as dangerous, but their specific T cells are unable to destroy it.

One reason why some patients respond to immunotherapies, which boost the immune system to fight cancer, but not others.

Javier Milei, president of Argentina, sang to his supporters after preliminary elections revealed his victory, furthering his push for radical economic reforms that the US has closely watched.

As Hurricane Melissa continued to strengthen offshore, Jamaicans have been urged to find shelter.

Melissa was already a significant Category 4 storm and was expected to severely hit the Caribbean island nation on Monday. Areas in the hurricane’s path could experience prolonged, punishing conditions and significant amounts of rain due to the slow pace at which it moves, which is only 7 kilometers (4 miles per hour).

On Sunday night, Melissa was concentrated south of Kingston, Jamaica, about 205 kilometers (130 miles) south-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, and about 495 kilometers (310 miles) south-southwest of those locations. The Jamaican coast won’t experience rain until late on Monday or early Tuesday.

According to the US National Hurricane Center, the hurricane could be Category 5 in strength on Monday with winds higher than 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour) and a top sustained speed of 230 kilometers per hour (143mph) as of Sunday night.

As the storm moves over the island, threatening flash flooding and landslides, up to 1 metre (40 inches) of rainfall could fall on some parts of Jamaica.

In a webcast briefing, US National Hurricane Center (NHC) Deputy Director Jamie Rhome stated that “this extreme rainfall potential, attributed to the slow motion, is going to cause a catastrophic event here in Jamaica.”

You must just be where you’re going to be, according to Rhome, and be prepared to ride this out for a while.

Late on Sunday, Jamaica’s government mandated evacuations for Port Royal in Kingston, Portland Cottage and Rocky Point in Clarendon, Old Harbour Bay in Taylor Land, Bull Bay, New Haven, and Riverton City in St Andrew.

At a press conference, Desmond McKenzie, the minister of local government, declared, “Many of these communities will not survive this flooding.” No community in Kingston is immune to flooding, according to the saying “Kingston is low, extremely low.”

Nothing more can we as a government do than beg and request that people follow the instructions. I’ll go on my knees if it helps, he said.

You can’t win this wager, they say. You can’t beat Melissa, according to McKenzie, who advised people to visit more than 650 shelters across the nation.

The storm surge is anticipated to mostly be over the island’s southern side, according to Evan Thompson, the principal director of the Jamaican Meteorological Service.

Every parish in our nation has the potential for flooding, according to Thompson.

You need to take note if you’re in a low-lying, flood-prone area. You need to take special care and locate an alternative location that you can move to if the heavy rainfall threatens you.

Winston Moxam was chatting with the AFP news agency as he hurriedly prepared his house for the incoming storm.

Maxim said, “I lose my roof, I lose a lot of things,” noting that he was particularly concerned by warnings the storm might be worse than the devastating Hurricane Gilbert of 1988, which left more than 40 people dead in Jamaica and hundreds more dead in other parts of the Caribbean and Mexico.

Both Montego Bay’s two main airports, Montego Bay’s Norman Manley International Airport and Sangster International Airport, were shut down, as well as the country’s two major seaports.

Trail of destruction

The storm is expected to move north and cross eastern Cuba on Tuesday night after passing over Jamaica, and it will continue to bring heavy rain and strong winds to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Due to the country’s outer bands, which produced heavy rain and landslides, Melissa has already been blamed for at least four fatalities this week in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Nine out of the 31 provinces are on red alert in the Dominican Republic as a result of the risk of flash floods, rising rivers, and landslides.

Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, and Holguin provinces were issued a hurricane warning by the Cuban government. Additionally, it issued a tropical storm warning for Las Tunas, a province.

A daily reality, or not?

Despite having hurricanes before, warming oceans and air temperatures are making tropical storms more frequent and severe, among other things.

Jamaica, a country with fewer than three million people on the planet, accounts for only 0.02 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to World Resources Institute data. However, it is expected to continue to suffer from the effects of climate change.

Andrew Holness, the prime minister of Jamaica, urged wealthy nations to increase climate financing to aid developing nations like Jamaica in a speech at the UN General Assembly in September.

“Climate change is not a distant threat or a topic of study.” He claimed that small, in-developed nations like Jamaica experience it daily.

The Atlantic hurricane season starts in early June and ends in late November with Melissa as the 13th named storm.

Beryl, which was a particularly strong storm for the time of year, was the last major hurricane to hit Jamaica in early July 2024.

In a move that highlights Iran’s deeply troubled economy and puts pressure on average citizens further, authorities have merged one of Iran’s largest private lenders into the country’s largest state-run bank.

The central bank on Thursday announced that Ayandeh Bank, privately owned by one of Iran’s wealthiest families, would be dissolved and merged with Bank Melli, the government-run national bank, and that Ayandeh branches across the country would be transformed into Bank Melli branches by Sunday.

Customers were told their accounts and deposits are safe, and all contracts remain under the same conditions. Ayandeh’s bailout won’t leave Iranians without harm because it has been riddled with losses on a scale that has had an impact on Iran’s macroeconomics for years and has resulted in murky operations and central bank interventions.

What brought us here?

Ayandeh began amid a crisis in the 2010s caused by corruption and lack of regulatory supervision over the ailing banking system, experts told Al Jazeera, at a time when Iran was reeling from United Nations sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Hundreds of unlicensed financial institutions spread across the nation as parastatals, military, or religious foundations.

In many instances, they allegedly did not return deposits, leaving thousands of investors without access to their deposits for years because they offered exorbitant interest rates to entice cash withdrawals from the banks.

The government and the central bank finally took over and completed the process of outlawing the unlicensed institutions by 2017, a year after they managed to take control of over 25 percent of the country’s entire money supply.

After being taken over, the institutions had little money in their pockets as a result of insider loans and property sunk.

The institutions had to print money to cover the majority of the skyrocketing debt, leading to rising inflation and rising living costs for average Iranians.

Ayandeh was established in 2013 via the merger of Tat Bank with two state-linked financial entities, the Salehin Credit Institution and Aatee Credit Institution.

The 63-year-old business tycoon Ali Ansari, who is credited with founding both Ayandeh and Tat, owned the majority of the shares in both financial institutions along with family members and close friends. His family is thought to be among Iran’s wealthiest.

Ansari has served on the boards of Tehran’s Esteghlal football club, as well as other business and influence-building initiatives, and has owned and led large-scale real estate projects.

Just how big are the numbers?

The bank has received years of state funding.

Two years ago, as Ayandeh racked up losses and more money had to be printed, the central bank revoked shareholder voting rights on more than 60 percent of the company’s stock and gave it to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance.

The bank continued to borrow money from the central bank and the government to keep afloat, but that did not help.

The central bank reported that Ayandeh had a staggering 5 quadrillion rials ($4.67 billion using the current open market exchange rate) in debt and had 2.5 quadrillion rials ($2.3 billion) in people’s deposits by the time of its forced dissolution last week.

Ayandeh was legally allowed to dole out up to 200 trillion rials ($187m) in loans based on its proven capital, but the central bank said the lender paid about 10 times that amount to individuals and entities over the years.

A small number of people and businesses that are closely connected to Ayandeh and its internal projects received up to 1.3 quadrillion rials ($1.21 billion), according to the central bank. Authorities have declined to reveal the identities of the individuals who stole the funds.

Iranians online have also been widely reacting to news of Ayandeh’s bankruptcy. Pedram Soltani, a businessman from the private sector, was one of those who demanded accountability.

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مردم باید بدانند هزینه چه کسانی بر جیبشان تحمیل شده است.

Translate: Ayandeh Bank’s list of overdue, doubtful, and toxic loans and assets is public! &nbsp, People must know whose costs have been imposed on their pockets.

The majority of Ayandeh’s loans have been overdue for a year or longer, and they are regarded as unlikely to be recovered.

All Iranian banks have a sizable volume of non-performing loans (NPL) in their books, according to Bijan Khajehpour, an economist and managing partner of Eurasian Nexus Partners Consulting.

“These NPLs are a consequence of loans having been extended to customers without the due process of assessing their collateral based on corrupt transactions between networks of power”, he told Al Jazeera.

It “reveals a lot about the extent of corruption and how political favoritism undermines business activities.”

According to the central bank, Ayandeh was in charge of an incredible 42% of all overdrafts made by banks from the central bank and 41% of all capital imbalance in the troubled Iranian banking sector.

It had a capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of minus 600 percent, whereas a bank must have a bare minimum ratio of 8 percent under Basel II international standards that are also accepted by Iran.

The banking sector’s average CAR has increased since its elimination, increasing it from 1.36 percent to about 5 percent.

Ayandeh is not a singular case; it merely highlights Iran’s systemic woes that are so dispersed around the world.

At least five other banks, including state-run Bank Sepah, which in 2020 had five other sinking banks merged into it in the largest banking consolidation in Iran’s history, are flagged by the central bank as being highly imbalanced.

Corruption and conflict in politics

One day prior, ultraconservative cleric Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, Iran’s judiciary chief, directly threatened Mohammad-Reza Farzin with legal action, the announcement regarding Ayandeh’s dissolution came.

“Mr Farzin, you have sufficient legal mandate to make any decision about Ayandeh Bank. Do your legal obligations otherwise we will enter and cost you more,” he wrote in a post on X.

Ejei claimed that the central bank’s accumulated losses increased by up to tenfold in the span of seven years despite the central bank’s involvement in running Ayandeh, including appointing and firing the board of directors and CEO.

No arrests or indictments, or any other form of legal reproach, have been announced by the judiciary despite the billions of dollars in losses.

Hardline politicians affiliated with the Paydari Front, who have been gaining influence in the parliament, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and state media, have consistently been the most vocal critics of the private bank.

The hardliners opposed the bank, which earned them points for posing as anti-corruption, along with reformers who support liberalizing and opening the Iranian economy to the West and discrediting political and economic rivals in the technocratic camp.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament and former IRGC commander, described Ayandeh’s dissolution as “a great success for the country’s decision-making and governance system” in a Saturday statement.

How Iranians will end up paying the price

Ayandeh’s demise also gives its assets, many of them in the real estate sector, complete state control, but selling them will be time-consuming and challenging.

The central bank has made it clear that Bank Melli will transfer all of Ayandeh’s assets, but not “any of the imbalances,” and that Melli will manage and sell them in order to make up for some of the losses.

The crown jewel of the assets is Iran Mall, the largest mall in the world in terms of total constructed floor area, located in western Tehran.

The deposit guarantee fund, which covers bank deposits up to a certain cap through the central bank’s auspices, will also have to cover the cost.

The top shareholders in Ayandeh’s company will be required to pay some of the money, according to the central bank, but it is unclear how much, when, and exactly in what form they will be required to pay.

However, due to the large volume of accumulated losses, Iranian media estimate that in an optimistic scenario, the state and Bank Melli will have to account for about two-thirds of the debt.

Printing more money, which has long been cited as the main factor in Iran’s inflation, which is currently at over 40% despite reinstated UN sanctions, and consistently among the highest in the world over the past ten years, will have to be done.

In plain English, tens of millions of Iranians will be liable for the cost as a result of declining purchasing power over the coming months and years.

Household items have already seen another major price jump in the aftermath of the 12-day war with Israel and the US in June, with food items like chicken, red meat, eggs and peas experiencing the sharpest increases.

In a statement released on Friday, Ayandeh’s Ansari claimed that the bankruptcy resulted from “agreements and practices that were beyond the bank’s control,” adding that the bank has “left behind valuable legacies and lasting assets.”