A personalised mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna and Merck shows lasting benefits for patients with high-risk skin cancer.
An experimental skin cancer vaccine developed by pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck shows promising results after a five-year follow-up in clinical trials.
The findings point to strong, lasting anti-tumour effects, and survival benefits for patients with advanced melanoma.
The therapy, currently in phase 2 of clinical trial, combines Moderna’s custom mRNA technology, intismeran autogene, with Merck’s immunotherapy medicine Keytruda.
Together, the treatments reduced the risk of cancer recurrence or death by 49 percent among high-risk melanoma patients who had undergone surgery, compared with Keytruda’s treatment alone.
"We continue to invest in our platform in oncology because of encouraging outcomes like these, which illustrate mRNA's potential in cancer care,” said Kyle Holen, Moderna’s senior vice president.
The mRNA works by training immune cells to spot unique cancer markers, while Keytruda blocks PD-1 proteins that tumours use to hide from immune cells. This enables T-cells, which play a central role in immune response, to attack tumours more efficiently.
Moderna and Merck are now awaiting the results from phase three of the clinical trial, the final stage of testing, to confirm the therapy’s benefits in a larger number of patients.
The new therapy is aimed at high-risk melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer that can spread even after surgical removal.
Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, is characterised by the uncontrolled growth of melanin-producing cells.
Melanoma rates have been rising over the past few decades, with more than 330,000 new cases diagnosed worldwide in 2022.
High-risk melanoma affects about 15,700 new patients yearly across the European Union, representing 15 percent of all melanoma cases, typically occurring in stages three and four.
Similar mRNA vaccines for high-risk melanoma are being developed by BioNTech and Roche, all in early clinical trials.
Moderna and Merck are additionally testing the same technology in trials targeting non-small cell lung cancer, bladder, and renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer.
