Pharma giants Merck and Moderna have teamed up to develop a cancer vaccine that is based on the same tech used in Covid shots.
The new shot — designed for people with high-risk melanoma — is in the second of three trials and a verdict on whether it works or not is expected within months.
It harnesses mRNA technology that uses pieces of genetic code from patients’ tumors to teach the body to fight off cancer.
The vaccine is given to people post-surgery to prevent the tumor from returning, and it is tailored to each patient, meaning no two shots will be the same.
This means it could be hugely expensive. Similar cancer vaccines being trialed cost around $100,000 (£91,000) to make each individual shot.
Merck and Moderna will share the production and commercial costs and split the profits if it goes to market. The collaboration has got markets excited, sending Moderna’s shares soaring 16 percent Wednesday.
MRNA is leading the frontier of potential cancer cures after the tech was rapidly accelerated during the pandemic, leading to the two most successful Covid vaccines — made by Pfizer and Moderna.
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As part of the updated deal, Merck will pay $250million to Moderna for joint rights to the cancer vaccine.
The two drug makers have been running trials of the shot together after forming a ‘strategic partnership’ in 2016.
In the latest phase 2 study, 157 patients given personalized vaccines alongside Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda.
They are being compared to a control group who also have high-risk melanoma but are only being given Keytruda. The trial has been going on for the past year.
If it works, the vaccine will be trialed in a much larger group involving thousands of patients.
Moderna was able to develop, trial, and seal approval of its Covid shot within the space of a year. The vaccine uses DNA taken from each patient’s tumor.
This genetic snippet is then inserted into messenger RNA — the molecule that carries a cell’s instructions for making proteins.
Once inside the body, the mRNA delivers this piece of code to human cells, teaching them to recognize cancer cells and attack them if it returns.
The hope is that the body will be able to recognize and destroy them before they can start to multiply and form tumours.
The vaccine is being given in nine doses every three weeks, along with one course of Keytruda every three weeks.
Dr. Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, said he was ‘excited about the future and the impact mRNA can have as a new treatment paradigm in the management of cancer’.
With the Covid vaccine market expected to die down in the near future, Moderna has been turning its attention to non-Covid vaccines.
The biotech giant’s stock surged 16 percent when the cancer vaccine announcement was made yesterday morning and was still up by around 10 percent in the afternoon.
Moderna and Merck’s joint venture could be a cause for optimism, but Americans appear to be suffering vaccine fatigue after constant Covid jab rollouts.
The White House’s lead Covid chief, Dr Ashish Jha, issued a warning on Tuesday that the pandemic is not over in response to the US’ sluggish booster vaccine uptake.
The rollout of the bivalent booster vaccines that were designed to perform better against Omicron variants has largely been a failure to this point.
Most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that only 11 million Americans have received the shot so far.
That represents fewer than 10 percent of everyone who is eligible for the jabs.
Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society said the rates of melanoma have been growing significantly over the past years.
It estimates that about 99,780 new melanomas will be diagnosed (around 57,180 in men and 42,600 in women) in the US in 2022.
And about 7,650 people are expected to die of melanoma (roughly 5,080 men and 2,570 women).
You are more than 20 times more likely to get melanoma if you are White compared to if you are African Americans.
The lifetime risk of contracting melanoma is about 2.6 percent (one in 38) for Whites, 0.1 percent (one in 1,000) for Blacks, and 0.6 percent (one in 167) for Hispanics.
The type of cancer is more common in men, but before age 50 it is more prevalent in women.
Daily Mail
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