STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about a cancer vaccine, an experimental pancreatic cancer drug, and more — SkimNews
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- A personalized mRNA cancer vaccine reduced the risk of disease recurrence by 42% versus standard treatment in a large clinical trial involving patients with melanoma.
- The melanoma trial found that participants lived significantly longer without cancer returning.
- Merck and Moderna announced the trial’s success in August but withheld the magnitude of benefit until a scheduled Saturday presentation at the annual European Society of Medical Oncology meeting.
- An oncology news website published some trial data Thursday, breaking the conference embargo before the planned Saturday presentation.
- Oncology experts are debating how broadly the vaccine technology can be applied to cancers beyond melanoma.
Why it matters: The 42% recurrence-risk reduction offers Merck and Moderna a significant advance in melanoma while leaving the vaccine’s usefulness in other tumor types unresolved. For patients, the reported gain in time without cancer returning is the material result; for researchers, the unresolved question is how far the same approach extends.
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