cancer vaccine before 2030?

Professors Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin co-founded BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to develop a COVID-19 shot.

The scientists told the BBC's "Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg" that a vaccine against cancer is on the horizon.

A cancer vaccine will be widely available for patients "before 2030," said Sahin.

The husband-and-wife team who co-founded BioNTech, the biotechnology company that partnered with Pfizer to develop an effective messenger-RNA (mRNA) shot against COVID-19, has predicted that a cancer vaccine could be widely available within the next decade.

"Yes, we feel that a cure for cancer, or to changing cancer patients' lives, is in our grasp," said Professor Ozlem Tureci during an interview on BBC's "Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg."

The cancer vaccine, which would build upon breakthroughs achieved by the scientists during the development of the COVID-19 shot, may be widely available within just eight years, said Professor Ugur Sahin.

"We believe that this will happen, definitely, before 2030," he told Keunssberg.

The hope is that a vaccine currently in development would train the body to recognize and attack cancers using mRNA technology.

"The goal that we have is that can we use the individualized vaccine approach to ensure that directly after surgery, patients receive a personalized, individualized vaccine, and we induce an immune response that so the T-cells in the body of the patient can screen the body for remaining tumor cells and ideally eliminate the tumor cells," Sahin explained.

BioNTech originally focused on developing mRNA-based technologies for a patient-specific approach to cancer treatment, per The New York Times.