A new study whose results are yet to be peer-reviewed has shown that a personalized mRNA vaccine made from the tumor tissue of a patient can prevent the cancer from recurring years after the treatment is given.
The study was a joint undertaking by pharmaceutical firms Merck and Moderna. The clinical trial involved giving more than 1,000 patients a combination of an immunotherapy medication called Keytruda after a surgical procedure to remove melanoma, a deadly type of skin cancer. Patients also received Intismeran, a personalized cancer vaccine.
The personalized vaccine was produced by extracting tumor samples and formulating the mRNA vaccine for each participant.
Some study participants received only the immunotherapy while others received the immunotherapy medication alongside the personalized vaccine. The outcomes of both groups were compared to establish whether the combination therapy attained superior results to the results observed in patients who only received the immunotherapy.
The analysis revealed that patients who got the combination therapy remained free of the cancer for a lot longer when compared to patients that only received the immunotherapy. The patients receiving the combination therapy also had a lower likelihood of the cancer metastasizing than participants who received only Keytruda.
Until the study results are released in a peer-reviewed journal, it remains unclear how long the beneficial effects of the mRNA vaccine last. While this Phase 3 trial focused on melanoma, the reported results have broader implications because they prove that cancer can be fought using personalized vaccines.
The personalization process involved using tumor samples to identify the specific neoantigens present in that patient. The vaccine was then developed to identify about 34 of those neoantigens so that the immune system could launch an attack against the cancer.
Under normal circumstances, the cancer evades the immune system by camouflaging itself to avoid detection. This is where the immunotherapy drug comes in; it disables the ability of the tumor cells to hide from the immune system, and as a result, the cancer becomes vulnerable to being targeted by an immune system bolstered by the personalized vaccine.
The positive results from this study bring to mind another early-stage trial investigating the use of an mRNA vaccine against pancreatic cancer that also had positive results. As more entities focus on developing more mRNA vaccines while others like Calidi Biotherapeutics Inc. (NYSE American: CLDI) specialize in developing immunotherapies, we are likely to see more pairings of these approaches to fighting cancer and the outcomes are bound to be superior to the clinical outcomes of using each of these treatments on their own.
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