In what it believes could be a game-changer, biotech company Moderna has announced an advance in its efforts to treat cancer, saying its personalised cancer vaccine programme succeeded in a mid-stage study of skin cancer patients.
This, said the company, affirmed that its messenger RNA technology could go beyond COVID-19 vaccines, reports Business Insider.
The recent study treated 157 patients with serious cases of melanoma, a common type of skin cancer. The patients had surgery to remove their cancer and then received treatment with either just Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda, the current standard of care, or Keytruda and Moderna’s vaccine. Moderna designed each vaccine to the unique DNA of each person’s tumour through a largely automated laboratory process. Ultimately, the group that also got Moderna’s vaccine had a 44% reduction in the rate of cancer recurrence and death compared with the trial participants who just got Keytruda.
The biotech vaulted to prominence in 2020 by developing one of the first coronavirus vaccines using its mRNA technology. The coronavirus vaccine was the first approved product for Moderna.
The company is to launch multiple late-stage studies in 2023 to test its cancer vaccine in not just melanoma patients but other types of cancer, alongside its partner, Merck. Merck paid $250m this year to jointly develop Moderna’s vaccine, extending a partnership between the two drugmakers that began in 2016.
Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel compared the cancer study results to the initial outbreak of COVID-19, when Moderna scrambled to respond and develop a vaccine.
“It’s, for me, a COVID-like moment going back to January 2020,” he said. “The enemy now is cancer. We know the technology works.”
Bright future in cancer vaccines
Bancel said Moderna’s mRNA approach is the key to its success. The mRNA gets inside immune cells and instructs them to produce particular proteins that can help fight a cancer. Bancel said he sees massive potential for this approach, with a market that could even surpass its coronavirus vaccine.
However, these trials will probably take years to finish, Bancel acknowledged, meaning potential FDA approval and commercial launch several years out.
Study results have yet to be presented at a conference or published in a journal.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Amazon involved in new cancer vaccine clinical trial
Cancer: Survivability is changing fast
FDA approves Merck’s Ketruda — first new treatment for bladder cancer in 20 years
Promising melanoma treatment breakthrough in US study