MOSCOW, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Ministry of Health has planned to include cancer vaccines in the country's compulsory medical insurance program in 2026, Russian news agency TASS reported Wednesday.
According to a draft government resolution, the program of state guarantees for free medical care is expected to expand to cover vaccine-based treatments for cancer patients.
The explanatory note to the document said that the list of high-tech medical care services will be supplemented with new personalized treatment methods for patients with oncological diseases.
Under the proposal, the program would include drug-based antitumor therapy using personalized mRNA vaccines, as well as a personalized peptide cancer vaccine known as Oncopept. In addition, cell-based immunotherapy using genetically modified components would also be added to the list of covered treatments.
Separate financial standards for each treatment stage are proposed due to the lengthy and costly nature of the therapy, which lasts more than six months and involves expensive production processes, particularly for personalized mRNA vaccines, the document noted.
The vaccines mentioned in the proposal are being jointly developed by Russia's Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, the National Medical Research Radiological Center, and the Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology under the Russian Ministry of Health. ■
