A vaccine experimental mRNA developed by moderna inc combined with Keytruda, Merck & Co’s best-selling immunotherapy, reduced the risk of death or recurrence by 44%. skin cancer deadlier compared to Keytruda alone, researchers reported Americans at a medical meeting held on Sunday.
The findings suggest that adding a personalized cancer vaccine based on mRNA technology to Keytruda, which reactivates the immune response, could extend the time patients have without recurrence or death, said Dr. Jeffrey Weber, of the Perlmutter Langone Cancer Center. from NYU, who presented the findings.
“From the therapeutic point of view of cancer in general, this is a potentially important advance”Dr. Ryan Sullivan, a melanoma expert at Mass General Cancer who worked on the study, said in a statement.
The results, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Orlando, Florida, add detailed data to partial findings released by the companies in December.
The Merck/Moderna collaboration is one of several that combine powerful immune-boosting drugs with mRNA vaccine technology. BioNTech SE and Gritstone Bio Inc are working on cancer vaccines based on mRNA technology.
Moderna’s vaccine is custom-made from analysis of the patient’s tumors after surgical removal. Vaccines are designed to train the immune system to recognize and attack specific mutations in cancer cells.
Merck’s Keytruda, approved to treat melanoma and many other types of cancer, belongs to a class of widely used immunotherapies known as checkpoint inhibitors, designed to turn off the protein PD-1, or programmed death 1, which helps cancer to evade the immune system.
The trial included men and women at high risk of melanoma recurrence.
Merck noted that the companies are in discussions with US regulators about the design of a late-stage trial, likely necessary for approval of the combination regimen.
Eliav Barr, head of global clinical development and chief medical officer at Merck, said in an interview that it could be three to four years before the results of the larger trials are known.
Barr noted that it took Moderna about eight weeks to design a personalized mRNA vaccine for each patient.
Source: Reuters
Source: Gestion
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