Russia approved a melanoma vaccine made from a patient's own tumor. It costs the state under $5,000 to build. What does the patient pay?
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$0
Russian patients pay nothing. Each vaccine takes three to four months to manufacture, and the course runs up to ten doses. Russia has not published trial results, so outside researchers cannot yet judge whether the vaccine works.
Moderna and Merck have built the same kind of vaccine in the US. It cut recurrences in a randomized trial of 1,137 patients and is still not approved in the US or the EU.
Russia approved a cancer vaccine built from each patient's own tumor. Patients there pay $0 for the full course.
Source: GxP News (Andrei Kaprin, Russian Health Ministry chief oncologist) · checked Apr 2026