STAT+: After a cancer vaccine’s first success, the race is on to expand the impact

Andrew covers the biopharma industry, scientific research, and public health across the continent. You can reach Andrew confidentially on Signal at drewqjoseph.71.

MADRID — With the first pivotal trial showing a customized mRNA treatment improved outcomes for cancer patients presented here this weekend, the conversation has already turned to how melanoma specialists should adopt the medicine — and how widely these novel vaccines can be deployed. 

“In principle, this type of approach may be applicable to other types of tumors,” James Larkin of London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, the scientific co-chair for this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology meeting, said at an opening press conference.

The trial, from Merck and Moderna, demonstrated that the bespoke mRNA-based vaccine intismeran reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 42% when combined with Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda versus Keytruda alone. The results are a clear victory for the field after what Vinod Balachandran of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center called in a lecture a “long and sordid” history of trying to develop cancer vaccines that, until now, has essentially added up to 100 years of failure.