The pharmaceutical company Promomed and BioCubaFarma, the Cuban state union of biotechnology and pharmaceutical enterprises, have signed a memorandum of intent aimed at developing a partnership in oncology, the Russian company’s press service told GxP News.
The press service clarified that Promomed and the Cuban Center for Molecular Immunology have agreed to jointly develop a polyvalent therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of a wide range of oncological diseases.
The memorandum sets out the principles and approaches for organising joint work on the development, preclinical and clinical studies of the innovative drug, as well as its registration and ensuring availability for healthcare systems worldwide.
“Solid tumours show pronounced resistance to standard therapies and a high level of adaptability, especially to monotherapy. Multi‑target vaccines, in contrast, target several antigens at once. Essentially, the development of such drugs lays the foundation for new treatment standards focused on reducing resistance and achieving long‑term remission,” said Kira Zaslavskaya, Director of New Products at Promomed Group.
In April 2026, the personalized anti‑tumour mRNA vaccine NeoOncovac, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology together with the National Medical Research Centre of Radiology and the Blokhin National Medical Research Centre of Oncology, was administered for the first time in Russia. It was given to a man diagnosed with skin melanoma.
As Andrey Kaprin, the Ministry of Health’s chief oncologist and general director of the radiology centre, explained, personalised mRNA vaccines are a new generation of biotechnological products created on the basis of the individual genetic profile of a patient’s tumour. Their task is to “teach” the immune system to recognise tumour cells and destroy them in a targeted manner.
