New Skin Cancer Vaccine Developed By Moderna 44 Percent Effective, Finds Study
The company is moving quickly for phase 3 of this study, which is also the largest and the most expensive stage of the clinical trials before regulators see its potential for final approvals.
Moderna, the vaccine maker that brought us the first vaccine for the novel coronavirus, has revealed that a vaccine they're working on to cure melanoma -- a kind of skin cancer -- has shown positive results in a small study of patients who had cancer surgically removed.
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Moderna worked with Merck¡¯s immunotherapy Keytruda on this and found that a combination of the vaccine with the immunotherapy resulted in statistically significant improvement in survival before cancer resurfaced in patients with advanced melanoma.
The company is moving quickly for phase 3 of this study, which is also the largest and the most expensive stage of the clinical trials before regulators see its potential for final approvals.
The vaccine continues to make use of mRNA technology which essentially trains the immune system of the recipient to recognise and respond specifically to mutations in the DNA of the patient¡¯s tumour.
In the mid-stage clinical trial which involved 157 patients, researchers compared the vaccine + Keytruda combination with just Keytruda. To the unaware, Keytruda sort of coats and prepares the body¡¯s immune system to detect and fight tumour cells. It has been approved to treat several kinds of cancer.
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Patients who took the potential vaccine as well as Keytruda saw a 44 percent reduction in the risk of death or cancer from coming back, the companies stated. The treatments lasted for around a year in both groups, unless the disease came back or side effects got too severe.
Phase 3 is expected to begin sometime next year, where both companies are intending to look at other tumour types too.
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