mRNA-based cancer vaccines currently in development offer significant economic benefits.
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In August 2025, the United States cut funding for vaccine development by half a billion dollars. That has jeopardized the potential benefits of mRNA vaccines against cancer—benefits that experts estimate could be worth about $75 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Alison Galvani at Yale University and her colleagues.
“The therapeutic progress demonstrated by each of the clinical trials in our analysis could potentially prevent nearly 50,000 deaths, with an economic value of $75 billion,” the team wrote. “These estimates represent only one annual cohort of patients receiving treatment for their respective cancers.”
Researchers warn that cuts in federal investment in mRNA vaccine technology could lead to a loss of these benefits.
Many of the most effective cancer treatments developed recently rely on enhancing the body's immune response to tumors. mRNA vaccines can be used to stimulate the immune system to target proteins found in cancer cells, and because they can be created so quickly, they can even be personalized to the cancer that affects each person.
To evaluate the potential benefits, Galvani and her team looked at 32 mRNA cancer vaccine trials currently underway in the United States. They identified the 11 most promising trials and then calculated how many additional years of life could be gained over a three-year period if these vaccines lived up to their promises and were made available to all those in the US who could benefit from them in any one year.
Finally, the team calculated the value of these extra life years using a statistical measure of the value of a life year based on how much people are willing to pay for it. For this measure, the team took value used by the US Department of Health and Human Services. calculate the impact of regulatory changes.
The figure per year group may be an overestimate because some of these vaccine candidates may not be approved, he said. Oliver Watson at Imperial College London, which used a similar approach to assess Covid-19 vaccines have delivered between $5 trillion and $38 trillion in health and economic benefits worldwide..
But if the team had calculated the value across more than one annual cancer treatment cohort and looked at the benefits over a longer period, the figure would have been much larger. “These savings are undoubtedly an underestimate,” Watson says.
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