Moderna says the same mRNA technology that powered its COVID-19 vaccine is proving effective in fighting melanoma.
The company presented the latest results from its trial involving 157 people with advanced skin cancer at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. In the study, Moderna and Merck combined their cancer treatments – Moderna’s experimental cancer vaccine and the Merck-approved checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) – to achieve potentially life-changing results for melanoma patients.
In the phase 2 study of patients with stage 3 or 4 melanoma who were treated after surgery to remove most of their tumors, two-thirds received a monthly dose of Moderna’s cancer vaccine for nine months, along with pembrolizumab treatments. every three weeks for a year. The remaining third received pembrolizumab alone.
After about three years, those who received both treatments had a 49% lower risk of cancer recurrence or death, and a 62% lower risk of cancer spreading, compared with people who received pembrolizumab alone. Overall, 75% of patients who took both therapies survived recurrence-free at 2.5 years, compared with 56% of those who received pembrolizumab.
“Across all measures of effectiveness, we are beginning to see significant and lasting responses,” says Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna. “This is a dramatic impact on melanoma.”
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The cancer vaccine relies on the same mRNA technology behind the COVID-19 vaccine, a plug-and-play molecular platform that makes it possible to swap the encoding of genetic information for different proteins that can be created relatively quickly. Each of the treated patients received a personalized vaccine, which took six to eight weeks to develop, tailored to the tumor’s specific mutations. “The results give us an extremely high degree of confidence that this effect is real and lasting,” says Hoge. “We believe it is now incredibly clear that these strong results will change cancer treatment for years to come.”
The other drug used in the study, pembrolizumab, launched a new era of immunotherapy treatments when it was approved in 2014. It unmasked tumor cells and made them more visible for the immune system to attack. The new study shows that combining two immune-based strategies – priming the immune system with a vaccine to generate T cells designed to recognize and destroy tumor cells, along with a drug that exposes the tumor cells – could be a powerful way to control malignant growth.
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Hoge says the company’s studies show the treatment increases populations of T cells that specifically target tumors. Each patient’s vaccine includes up to 34 tumor-specific targets, and most patients generated strong T cell populations against 15 to 20 of them. “We are hitting [the tumor] with a large number of T cells and targeting not just one mutation but usually 15 of them, so there are not many places [for the tumor] hide,” says Hoge. “It’s a very broad immune response.”
The trial will continue to follow these patients and will include 100 more in phase 3. The two companies are also testing the same combination in patients with another type of skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, before and after surgery, as well as in the kidney. and patients with bladder cancer. If the current results are maintained, they could represent a milestone for cancer immunotherapy, potentially opening the door to a unique treatment that could permanently eliminate a person’s cancer. “If these survival curves continue beyond three years, then it appears that we have effectively eliminated the tumor cells,” says Hoge. “Even if there is a single cell somewhere that hides for a few years and then tries to grow back into another tumor, the immune system already has its mugshot and knows what it looks like – so by the time it commits its next crime, the immune system resolves it.”
“This combination boosts the immune response to effectively eliminate the cancer,” he says, “and once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
