Personalized mRNA Melanoma Cancer Vaccine Saves Lives

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DcWm9zAvw31/Melanoma is a cancer uniquely sensitive to the human immune system. Use of immune-booster checkpoint inhibitors has already extended the lives of countless melanoma patients with advanced, metastatic disease.Now, from the immunologic wizards at Boston’s Moderna, the company that crash-engineered one of the highly effective CoVid vaccines, comes another mRNA vaccine that kindles new hope for melanoma patients. This time the vaccine is a customized medication designed to turbocharge immunity to a persons own melanoma. Moderna calls the resultant medication intismeran autogene. It is created by analyzing the DNA of the patient’s melanoma, creating appropriate mRNA to code for tumor-specific markers, and encapsulating the mRNA in a protective lipid envelope.A five-year update of the randomized phase IIb KEYNOTE-942 melanoma trial provides very encouraging evidence. Researchers across the globe tested this individualized mRNA-based neoantigen therapy, plus Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab, Keytruda, versus pembrolizumab alone in 157 patients whose high-risk stage III or IV melanoma had been surgically removed.After a median of about five years, the combination of the Moderna vaccine plus the Merck checkpoint inhibitor cut the risk of recurrence or death by 49% and the risk of distant metastasis or death by 59% compared with pembrolizumab alone.At four years, 72.4% of patients receiving the combination remained recurrence-free, compared with 49.1% receiving pembrolizumab alone.The combo treatment also produces stronger and more persistent T-cell responses, with no new safety issues.Although overall survival currently favors the combination, a larger double-blind, randomized phase III trial will be necessary to close the deal.  Also, parallel trials of this cancer vaccine-checkpoint inhibitor combo therapy are underway for lung, kidney, and bladder cancers.Let me finish on a personal note. I am a melanoma survivor following surgery and checkpoint immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial. I have always been a firm believer in cancer immunotherapy having earned a masters degree in immunology and having completed a 3 year fellowship in cancer surgery and immunotherapy at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute. So if you have cancer or are a loved on of some who does have it, know this. Cancer, while life-threatening, IS a chronic disease. You can live with it as well as die with it. If you develop it, opt for the best available therapy. That allows you to live another day when a new development, like this personal cancer vaccine, will increase yours odds of beating it for good.References on my website.#Melanoma #CancerVaccine #mRNA #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #moderna