Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and MSD (known as Merck in the US and Canada) have made a joint announcement in a press release about a vaccine treatment to patients who have undergone melanoma (skin cancer) that can prevent it from returning or spreading, an adjuvant therapy after surgery in combination with standard immunotherapy medication.
The results from a study of 1,137, all of them who had had a melanoma removed surgically, show "statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival" for the users who took a personalized cancer vaccine, called Intismeran, in combination with Merck's own cancer immunotherapy medication Keytruda, compared to those that only took Keytruda.
The vaccine is based on mRNA, like the Covid vaccines, and is personalised for each patient, based "on the unique mutational 'fingerprint' of a patient's own tumour", the press release said.
These are the results of a decade of work by the two companies to find a vaccine for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, but it will continue. The fact that the results were published on an press released instead of a scientific journal, with the full results of the tests, means it was probably an "strategic" move by the companies, according to a Professor of Molecular Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid, José Bautista, asked by EFE.
He did note, however, that the announcement has "a significant scientific potential" and what has been published so far is good, although the cost to healthcare systems of a completely personalised treatment remains to be seen, as the companies did not announce anything about the cost.
