Moderna-Merck Vaccine Cuts Recurrence And Spread of Melanoma, Raises New Treatment Hope (reuters.com) 23
Reuters reports "a major success in a new field of cancer treatment this week, as Moderna and Merck announced a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine "reduced the risk of recurrence and spread of melanoma in a late-stage trial". The vaccine was tested with Merck's widely used immunotherapy drug Keytruda:
Thousands of patients who have undergone surgery to remove high-risk melanoma tumors could benefit as soon as next year if regulators approve the vaccine, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an interview. This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient's immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells, and the first such study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone... Interim results of the ongoing study, released on Wednesday, found the treatment, Intismeran, met both its primary target of reducing cancer recurrence and its secondary goal of preventing tumors from spreading to other parts of the body, compared with Keytruda alone. When the vaccine is injected into a patient, the patient's cells produce copies of mutations for the immune system to recognize and destroy... Merck said the companies are already in talks with regulators about the treatment.
"Merck, Moderna and other companies are testing similar approaches against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers," the article points out. It adds that Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, "said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers."
More from CNN: The trial result is "a monumental leap forward," validating mRNA technology as a cancer treatment, said Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology...
Roche and BioNTech, whose mRNA technology was used in the Pfizer COVID vaccines, are testing a similar treatment called autogene cevumeran in mid-stage studies in colon and pancreatic cancer patients who have undergone surgery. Results of the colon cancer trial are expected in 2027, with pancreatic trial results to follow in 2031. "We should be hearing results from multiple studies over the next few years and there's every reason to hope now, with this news, that many of them will be positive," said Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Merck, Moderna and other companies are testing similar approaches against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers," the article points out. It adds that Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, "said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers."
More from CNN: The trial result is "a monumental leap forward," validating mRNA technology as a cancer treatment, said Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology...
Roche and BioNTech, whose mRNA technology was used in the Pfizer COVID vaccines, are testing a similar treatment called autogene cevumeran in mid-stage studies in colon and pancreatic cancer patients who have undergone surgery. Results of the colon cancer trial are expected in 2027, with pancreatic trial results to follow in 2031. "We should be hearing results from multiple studies over the next few years and there's every reason to hope now, with this news, that many of them will be positive," said Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.
It's tough, since cancer are just your cells (Score:1)
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Kill the mutant. Destroy the alien. Burn the heretic.
Re: It's tough, since cancer are just your cells (Score:2)
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That would be a different Galactic Empire.
Re: It's tough, since cancer are just your cells (Score:2)
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Relevant XKCD [xkcd.com].
But more seriously, this is post late stage trial, where those concerns have been evaluated. Also noting that the 5-year survival for stage IV melanoma is around 35% and the mid-stage trial appeared results to reduce the recurrence or death by about 50%.
Good Dupe (Score:3)
This is great news and thus worth repeating.
I'm afraid to ask what the price of the vaccine might be. But, that vaccination is even possible is a gigantic step in the right direction.
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The steps are simple .. the costs listed below are without labor and capital investment:
1. Obtain the tumor vs. normal sequence at 100x high coverage ($800).
2. Run sequence obtained in step 1 through a neo-antigen selection program ($0? lol) https://github.com/openvax/neo... [github.com]
3. Synthesize & purify the requisite RNA ($100) https://www.creative-biogene.c... [creative-biogene.com]
4. Load the RNA into LNPs using a microfluidics device (the one most people uses is called NanoAssemblr https://www.cytivalifesciences... [cytivalifesciences.com] ) ($100)
5. Pu
Re: As a pure-blood MAGA person (Score:5, Funny)
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I encourage all red states to ban this vaccine
The rest of the world crosses their fingers.
Infectious Subject (Score:2)
Why did you propagate it? Actually that's a rhetorical question and I think you can say "for the joke" in this case, but I think you should have added a second reply with a more thoughtful contribution and different Subject...
But my Subject isn't funny because most cancers are not directly infectious (though some cancers are linked to infectious conditions). Moral hazard time?
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I will not infect myself with mRNA crap, which killed so many people during the "covid" hoax times.
Gullibility is the disease you're currently battling.
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I will not infect myself with mRNA crap, which killed so many people during the "covid" hoax times.
Fauci will rot in prison, and so will the big pharma execs.
Good news. You're already "infected" since mRNA is present in every human body [apnews.com].
However, I'm fairly certain if you're intent on not having any mRNA, we could find someone to accommodate you.
God bless Donald Trump (Score:3)
Re: God bless Donald Trump (Score:2)
This isn't the path to final cure (Score:4, Interesting)
Not every tumor has strong neo-antigen presentation and many use complex immune evasion strategies that may be hard to defeat, therefore treatment evasion is still possible. https://www.cell.com/cancer-ce... [cell.com] Also notice they aren't using it as a treatment during cancer. You have to be mostly cancer free for it to work -- and even then it's not 100%.
The issue is that it will always be tough to identify a cell as cancerous from the outside. To do it reliably, you have to do it from INSIDE the cell. Unfortunately getting things into cells is not trivial.
The path to a final cure (an agent that can be easily transported into every type of cell, determine if it's within a cancer cell, and destroy it) will be something like the following: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] (explanatory article about it: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] )
There are numerous problems to solve with the "final cure" path though. I can list about a bunch .. but the good news is that for each one, there are about 2 or 3 possible ways it can be solved -- I think. We're probably about a decade or two out (consider the papers on neo-antigen vaccines started coming out in the 1990s, first proof-of-concept in early 2000s, and a "holy smokes, this thing really works" paper around 2017 I think). And note the neo-antigen therapy is still not approved.
Just a though (Score:2)
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Yes, they are calling it a neo-antigen therapy now, but this type of treatment used to be called vaccine for the prior two decades.
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It is a vaccine in the traditional sense. It creates immunity to the cancer cells, the same way the covid vaccine created immunity to the covid virus.