‘Breakthrough’ Moderna personalized mRNA cancer vaccine curbs melanoma reoccurrence |
Reuters — Moderna said Wednesday that a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial, a major success in a new field of cancer treatment that sent the drugmaker’s shares surging as much as 160%.
Moderna developed the vaccine with Merck and tested it together with immunotherapy drug Keytruda, a widely used treatment for melanoma. Thousands of patients who have undergone surgery to remove high-risk melanoma tumors could benefit as soon as next year if regulators approve the vaccine, Moderna president Stephen Hoge said in an interview.
This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient’s immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells and the first such study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone. Similar approaches are being tested against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers.
Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers.
“The positive hit here leads us into truly this next phase in immunotherapy,” Knudsen said. “This is an auspicious start — this is where things begin.”
The vaccine — which is a personalized treatment — could be difficult to make and scale up commercially, although Hoge said Moderna is confident it can meet........