Progress Shown On Cancer Vaccine

"Moderna Inc.'s cancer vaccine helped prevent relapse for melanoma patients, results from a midstage trial showed, demonstrating progress in the pursuit of shots to ward off cancer by jump-starting the immune system.

About 79% of high-risk melanoma patients who got Moderna's personalized vaccine and Merck & Co.'s immunotherapy Keytruda were alive and cancer-free at 18 months, compared with about 62% of patients who received immunotherapy alone, researchers said Sunday. The 157-person trial offers some of the strongest evidence yet that such vaccines could benefit cancer patients.

"I am fairly encouraged that this will open up a whole new set of trials," said Jeffrey Weber, the senior investigator on the trial and deputy director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health.

Moderna and Merck said they would expand their research into other tumor types including non-small cell lung cancer. The companies have said they plan to run a larger study to confirm the vaccine's safety and efficacy in treating high-risk melanoma. They released a limited overview of the results in December.

Fuller results are to be presented at an American Association for Cancer Research conference in Orlando, Fla., where other researchers plan to present data on vaccines meant to treat cancers including pancreatic and head and neck. The work, which needs to be confirmed in more advanced trials, represents progress after decades of ambition but limited success.

"It feels as though harvest time is coming," said Andrew Allen, co-founder and chief executive officer at Gritstone bio Inc., which is conducting a midstage trial for a personalized vaccine that aims to treat metastatic colorectal cancer.

Many experimental cancer vaccines aim to treat cancer or prevent it from coming back rather than preventing it from developing in the first place. Advances in immunotherapies, genomic sequencing and artificial intelligence have helped make cancer-targeting vaccines more promising, oncologists said. The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the power of mRNA technology that Moderna and others are testing in cancer shots.

"This is the first time we've been able to use vaccine technology to really be able to change the course of a cancer," said Eliav Barr, Merck's head of global clinical development and chief medical officer.

Moderna's shot is tailored to each patient. The company analyzes a patient's tumor for mutations and chooses up to 34 targets called neoantigens that it suspects will create the strongest immune response. The patient receives nine doses of the vaccine, one every three weeks, on top of up to 18 cycles of immunotherapy.

Some 157 patients with stage three or four melanoma were enrolled and underwent surgery to remove the cancer. Around 107 patients received the shot and immunotherapy after surgery, while 50 were treated with immunotherapy after surgery alone.

Recurrence of cancer or death was reported in 22% of patients who got the shot and the immunotherapy Keytruda and in 40% of patients who got immunotherapy alone.

The combination with the vaccine helped reduce the risk of recurrence and death for the melanoma patients in the trial by some 44% compared with Keytruda alone, the researchers said." [1]

 

1. U.S. News: Progress Shown On Cancer Vaccine
Abbott, Brianna.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 17 Apr 2023: A.3.