President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russian scientists are close to creating cancer vaccines and that the sera could soon be available to patients.

Vladimir Putin said in televised comments that “we have come very close to creating so-called cancer vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs of the new generation,” Reuters and Agerpres reported.

“I hope that soon they will be effectively used as methods of individual therapy,” added the President of the Russian Federation, speaking at a forum dedicated to the technologies of the future organized in Moscow.

Vladimir Putin did not specify the types of cancer targeted by the proposed vaccines, nor how the serums would fight these serious diseases.

Several countries and companies are already working on developing vaccines against cancer. Last year, the British government signed an agreement with German company BioNTech to start clinical trials for “personalized cancer treatment” with the aim of reaching 10,000 patients by 2030.

Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck & Co are developing an experimental cancer vaccine that, according to a mid-term study, has shown to halve the risk of recurrence and death from melanoma – the deadliest skin cancer – after three years of treatment.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently six licensed vaccines against human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes many types of cancer, including cervical cancer, and hepatitis B vaccine (HBV), which can lead to cancer hepatic.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Russia developed its own vaccine against Covid-19, Sputnik V, which it also sold in several countries, although domestically it suffered from the reluctance of the population to get vaccinated.

Putin himself publicly stated that he had vaccinated “Satellite V”, thus trying to reassure the Russian population of the effectiveness and safety of this vaccine.