Move FM Global News

ORLANDO, Florida: During a medical meeting held at the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida, researchers announced that compared with Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda alone, an experimental mRNA cancer vaccine developed by Moderna and Merck cut the risk of death or recurrence of the most deadly skin cancer by 44 percent.

Presenting the findings, Dr. Jeffrey Weber of the NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center, said adding a personalized mRNA-based cancer vaccine to Keytruda could increase the period patients have without recurrence or death.

In a statement, Dr. Ryan Sullivan, a melanoma expert at Mass General Cancer who worked on the study, said, “From a general cancer therapeutic standpoint, this is a potential major breakthrough.”

Further data will be presented at an upcoming medical meeting, which will then be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Rivals BioNTech and Gritstone are working on cancer vaccines based on mRNA technology that combine drugs that drive the immune system to target cancers.

Among 107 study subjects who received both the experimental vaccine, mRNA-4157/V940, and Keytruda, the cancer returned in 24 subjects (22.4 percent) within two years of follow-up, compared with 20 out of 50 (40 percent) who received only Keytruda.

There were also few differences in response rates among people whose tumors had many mutations, a predictor of immunotherapy response – and those whose tumors did not.

The report also showed that severe side effects were similar between the two arms of the study, with fatigue being the most common side effect reported by patients specifically associated with the vaccine.

The companies are in talks with US regulators on the details of a late-stage trial, which would be required for approval of the combination regimen.