Moderna’s share price more than doubled during yesterday’s market session in the US after it announced major progress with its personalised cancer treatment. Shares surged by as much as 160% during trading after Moderna and Merck announced positive results from a Phase 3 trial of their experimental mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran autogene.
Moderna’s new treatment under research identifies genetic mutations that are unique to an individual patient’s tumour and uses them to train the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells. The DNA sequence of the patient’s tumour is analysed and a personalised mRNA vaccine is manufactured containing instructions for up to 34 tumour-specific neoantigens.
The treatment is currently being developed together with Merck’s Keytruda, an established immunotherapy drug which helps the immune system attack cancer.
The latest Phase 3 trial involved 1,137 patients with high-risk stage IIB to stage IV melanoma whose tumours had already been surgically removed. Patients received either Keytruda together with the personalised Moderna vaccine or Keytruda alone for approximately one year.
Moderna and Merck said the trial met its primary objective of improving recurrence-free survival and also succeeded in reducing the risk of the cancer spreading to other parts of the body. Detailed figures from the Phase 3 trial have not yet been released and there are still no results showing whether the treatment improves overall survival.
Previous Phase 2 data have already shown significant results. After five years of follow-up, patients receiving intismeran together with Keytruda had a 49% lower risk of recurrence or death and a 59% lower risk of distant metastasis or death compared with patients receiving Keytruda alone.
The treatment is therefore not yet an approved cure for melanoma, but the successful Phase 3 trial is a major breakthrough for personalised cancer medicine and the first positive late-stage result for an individualised mRNA cancer vaccine. Moderna and Merck are already discussing the results with regulators, and Moderna said the treatment could potentially become available as early as next year if approved.
The companies are also testing the technology against other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney cancer.
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