The mRNA cancer vaccines now in development come with large economic benefits
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In August 2025, the US cut half a billion dollars in funding for vaccine development. This put the potential benefits of mRNA cancer vaccines at risk – benefits that could be worth around $75 billion a year in the US alone, according to an estimate by Alison Galvani at Yale University and her colleagues.
“The therapeutic progress demonstrated by each of the clinical trials in our analysis has the potential to avert nearly 50,000 deaths, with an economic value of $75 billion,” the team writes. “These estimates represent only a single annual cohort of patients treated for their respective cancer.”
Curtailing federal investment in mRNA vaccine technology risks forfeiting these benefits, the researchers warn.
Many of the most effective cancer treatments developed recently are based on boosting the body’s immune response to tumours. mRNA vaccines can be used to stimulate the immune system to target proteins found on cancerous cells – and because they can be created so quickly, they can even be personalised to the cancer affecting each individual.
To estimate the potential benefits, Galvani and her team looked at 32 mRNA cancer vaccine trials currently under way in the US. They identified the 11 most promising trials, then estimated how many extra years of life would be gained over a three-year period if these vaccines live up to their promise and are given to all those in the US who could benefit in any one year.
Finally, the team calculated the value of those extra years of life using a statistical measure of the value of a year of life that is based on how much people would be willing to pay for it. For this measure, the team took the value used by the US Department of Health and Human Services to calculate the impact of regulatory changes.
The figure per annual group might be an overestimate because some of these vaccine candidates might not be approved, says Oliver Watson at Imperial College London, who has used a similar approach to estimate that the covid-19 vaccines provided health and economic benefits worth between $5 trillion and $38 trillion globally.
But if the team calculated the value for more than one annual cohort getting cancer treatments and looked at the benefits over a longer period, the figure would be much greater. “These savings are undoubtedly an underestimate,” says Watson.
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