President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russian scientists were close to creating vaccines for cancer that could soon be available to patients, Paralel.Az reports citing Reuters.

Putin said in televised comments that "we have come very close to the creation of so-called cancer vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs of a new generation".

"I hope that soon they will be effectively used as methods of individual therapy," he added, speaking at a Moscow forum on future technologies.

Putin did not specify which types of cancer the proposed vaccines would target, nor how.