Personalised cancer vaccines are not yet registered in any country worldwide, with clinical trials only at Phase II at most, Veronika Skvortsova, head of Russia’s Federal Medical‑Biological Agency (FMBA), said at a session on “Biotechnology in Medicine: Driver of Bioeconomy and Vector of Export Development” at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) 2026.
Skvortsova stressed that Russia has become a pioneer in changing and accelerating the regulatory framework, introducing understanding of high‑tech, personalised, immunological and other types of drugs.
“We have found ourselves among the leading countries, although three countries were ahead,” she added.
The reference was to the development of mRNA‑based cancer vaccines.
Roman Ivanov, chairman of the academic council, director of the Translational Medicine Research Centre and scientific supervisor of the Medical Biotechnology programme at Sirius University of Science and Technology, noted that mRNA vaccines are also being developed to prevent infectious diseases, such as tick‑borne encephalitis and seasonal respiratory viral infections.
But the main trend in medicine, he said, is the growing number of drugs based on genome editing intended to treat hereditary diseases.
Roman Ivanov specified that Sirius is currently testing such a technology for the treatment of haemophilia.
