American laboratories Moderna and Merck have announced positive preliminary results for their messenger RNA vaccine under development against skin cancer. In a trial of around 150 people with melanoma, taking the vaccine along with the cancer drug Keytruda reduced the risk of the cancer coming back or dying by 44%, compared to people only treated with the anti-cancer.
“For the first time, we have demonstrated the potential of messenger RNA to have an impact during a randomized clinical trial on melanoma”, welcomed Stéphane Bancel, the boss of Moderna. The developed melanoma vaccine is “customized”, “designed and produced from the unique mutational signature” identified on the patient’s tumor, the statement explains.
messenger RNA to fight many diseases
Moderna and Merck, known as MSD outside North America, plan to release the full results of the trial soon, the results of which have not yet been peer-reviewed. They also plan to launch so-called phase 3 trials in 2023, i.e. on a much larger number of patients.
Messenger RNA technology has proven key in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Moderna had made a sensational irruption on the pharmaceutical market by being one of the first, with Pfizer-BioNTech, to offer a vaccine against Covid-19 using messenger RNA. This technology is considered promising in the fight against many other diseases. Around 325,000 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed in 2020 worldwide, according to the release.