I live in San Diego, just a few miles from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the longtime home base for Dr. Jonas Salk. For those of you who are not aware of the late Dr. Salk’s groundbreaking contribution to public health, he was a physician and scientist who ignored the nay-sayers of his day and developed a vaccine for polio that ultimately saved millions of lives nationwide and worldwide.
By the late 1950’s, the Salk vaccine had reached at least 90 countries, and Salk had reached legendary status. But he was too busy trying to come up with new solutions to different public health problems to think too much about his legacy.
What isn’t quite as well known is the fact that Salk and his colleagues were also interested in learning more about cancer. Now that immunotherapies and vaccines are coming together as a strong one-two punch against cancer, we are unquestionably going to see many new modalities and many lives will likely be saved.
The arrival of cancer vaccines did not just happen because of Covid. It happened because scientists put in painstaking years of trial and error. Moderna’s vaccine partnership with Merck, for example, probably would not have happened without Covid. Or if it did it would have taken much longer.
Gritstone is another success story so far. This vaccine trial for metastatic colorectal cancer is moving forward with phase 2/3 trials colorectal treatment. The early data is encouraging (read more below in this week’s stories).
Looking Back and Looking Forward
Cancer was on Dr. Salk’s mind for many years. In 1970, the Salk Cancer Center at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies was established and received its NCI designation three years later. Today, the center includes 31 faculty members, and more than 500 students, postdoctoral fellows, and technical staff work in Salk Cancer Center labs.
The center’s mission is to understand fundamental aspects of biology related to cancer; accelerate translation of groundbreaking discoveries into clinical opportunities for diagnostics and therapeutics; develop innovative tools and technologies to better treat, diagnose, and prevent cancer; and train the next generation of cancer scientific leadership.
It’s certainly something on which we are keeping an eye. I expect great things from the folks at Salk. It’s what they do. Dr. Salk and his fellow scientists changed the world. And more than a half century later scientists there are coming up with modalities that could have a similarly enormous impact on public health worldwide as his polio vaccine did 75 years ago.
