What’s next for cancer vaccines after successful melanoma study

Andrew covers the biopharmaceutical industry, scientific research and public health across the continent. You can reach Andrew confidentially on Signal at drawqjoseph.71.

MADRID — With the first pivotal trial showing that a personalized mRNA-based treatment improves outcomes for cancer patients presented here this weekend, the conversation has already turned to how melanoma specialists should embrace the drug — and to what extent these new vaccines can be deployed.

“In principle, this type of approach may be applicable to other types of tumors,” James Larkin of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, scientific co-chair of this year’s European Society of Medical Oncology meeting, said at an opening news conference.

The trial, led by Merck and Moderna, demonstrated that the tailored mRNA-based intismeran vaccine reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 42% when combined with Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor, Keytruda, compared to Keytruda alone. The results are a clear victory for the field after what Vinod Balachandran of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center called in a conference a “long and sordid” history of attempts to develop cancer vaccines that, until now, has essentially amounted to 100 years of failure.