An experimental vaccine from Moderna shows promise in keeping deadly skin cancer from returning for years, according to new clinical trial results.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The research, presented Monday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, found that a personalized mRNA vaccine halved the risk of melanoma returning after five years.
The results were also published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and in about half of patients, the disease will come back within the first five years of treatment.“The treatments we have are not perfect.People relapse,” said Dr.
Janice Mehnert, the director of the melanoma and cutaneous medical oncology program at NYU Langone Health in New York and the senior trial investigator.In the trial, 50 patients received the standard treatment: surgery, followed by a type of immunotherapy called pembrolizumab, also known as Keytruda.Another 107 patients also got a personalized vaccine tailored to their specific tumor.
All of the people in the trial had at least Stage 3 melanoma, meaning the cancer had spread to nearby lymph nodes or skin and had a high risk of returning even after surgery.Five years later, nearly 70% of people in the vaccine group were cancer-free, compared to 49% of people in the standard treatment group.Adding the vaccine also cut a person’s risk of the cancer metastasizing by nearly 60%.
Killing cancer cells as they appearSurgery is the first line of treatment for melanoma, with the goal of removing the entire tumor.However, undetectable cancer cells often remain in the body, so additional treatments are needed to find and eliminate these cells.
Mehnert and a team of researchers across the United States and Australia have been studying whether a personalized vaccine can effectively do this.The vaccine works by training the immune system to identify and kill ling...