STAT+: Moderna and Merck say mRNA cancer vaccine succeeded in late-stage melanoma trial
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Moderna and Merck announced a late-stage clinical trial showed their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine slowed the return and spread of melanoma when added to Merck's Keytruda.
- The vaccine, called intismeran, was tested in adjuvant melanoma — patients whose disease had been surgically removed — marking the first randomized Phase 3 trial designed to definitively prove a neoantigen cancer vaccine's benefit.
- Neoantigen vaccines had long been seen as having potential as cancer treatments, but no randomized Phase 3 trial had previously confirmed their benefit before this result.
- The drugmakers did not immediately release detailed data, leaving the magnitude of the benefit unconfirmed pending full trial readouts.
- The result could further demonstrate mRNA's power as a platform for developing both traditional vaccines and therapeutics, extending the technology beyond infectious-disease vaccines.
Why it matters: This is the first randomized Phase 3 trial to confirm the benefit of a neoantigen cancer vaccine — a class long viewed as promising but unproven at the pivotal-trial stage. For adjuvant melanoma patients whose disease has been surgically removed, combining intismeran with Keytruda offers the first validated mRNA-based approach in oncology, though Moderna and Merck have not yet released detailed efficacy data.
Ask SkimNews
