Up­dat­ed: Mod­er­na claims can­cer vac­cine suc­cess in tri­al of mR­NA shot with Mer­ck

An ex­per­i­men­tal, mR­NA-based can­cer vac­cine sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced the risk that melanoma pa­tients’ can­cers would re­turn and be fa­tal, Mod­er­na and Mer­ck said, in what the com­pa­nies are call­ing the first-ever re­sults from an mR­NA ther­a­py in a ran­dom­ized tri­al of can­cer pa­tients.

In the Phase II tri­al, pa­tients with Stage 3 or Stage 4 melanoma got Mer­ck’s drug Keytru­da, plus dos­es of a per­son­al­ized can­cer vac­cine called mR­NA-4157/V940 that the two de­vel­oped joint­ly. Nine months lat­er, the treat­ment had re­duced the risk of re­cur­rence or death by 44%, com­pared with Keytru­da alone, the com­pa­nies said Tues­day.

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