Merck and Moderna announced that their experimental mRNA cancer vaccine met key goals in a late-stage trial for patients with melanoma, according to NBC News. The vaccine, tested alongside the drug Keytruda, showed an effect in preventing the cancer from returning in people who had already had their tumors surgically removed.
The companies reported that the Phase 3 trial, called INTerpath-001, hit its primary endpoints of recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival, meaning the treatment delayed or prevented both local relapse and spread to other parts of the body, per Business Wire. The trial enrolled patients with stage IIB through stage IV melanoma, a form of skin cancer that had been completely resected, according to the same release.
The results mark a potential turning point for personalized cancer treatment, as the vaccine is designed to train the immune system to recognize and attack mutations specific to each patient's tumor, NBC News reports. CNBC noted that Moderna's stock more than doubled following the announcement, signaling investor enthusiasm about the data. WBUR described the findings as evidence that the mRNA approach, which gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, can be repurposed to fight cancer.
The companies have not yet published full details of the trial results, and the data will likely face scrutiny from regulators and independent researchers, according to the Washington Post, which called the moment potentially landmark for the field. Questions remain about how durable the benefit will be and how the therapy will perform in a broader patient population.
Watch for the companies to present the complete dataset at a medical conference and to begin discussions with regulatory agencies about a possible approval pathway.
