- Moderna’s cancer vaccine reduced the risk of death or skin cancer recurrence in a mid-stage study.
- Analysts say the long-term success of the vaccine has yet to be proven.
- “Now, we’re an oncology company,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told Insider.
- For more stories, visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
Biotech company Moderna has just announced a significant breakthrough in its efforts to treat cancer.
Moderna said on Tuesday that its personalized cancer vaccine program was successful in a mid-stage study of skin cancer patients, claiming that its messenger RNA technology may be a game changer beyond just Covid-19 vaccines. 19. Investors were delighted by the news, sending Moderna’s share price up 21% as of midday Tuesday.
The recent study treated 157 patients with severe cases of melanoma, a common type of skin cancer. The patients underwent surgery to remove their cancer and were then treated with Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda, the current standard of care, or with the vaccine from Keytruda and Moderna. Moderna tailored each vaccine to the unique DNA of each person’s tumor through a largely automated laboratory process. Ultimately, the group that also received Moderna’s vaccine had a 44% reduction in the rate of cancer recurrence and death compared to trial participants who received Keytruda alone.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech rose to fame in 2020 by developing one of the first coronavirus vaccines using its mRNA technology. The coronavirus vaccine was the first product approved for Moderna, which was founded in 2010. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel compared the results of the cancer study to the initial outbreak of covid-19, as Moderna scrambled to respond. and develop a vaccine.
“It’s, for me, a Covid-like moment going back to January 2020,” he told Insider. “It’s the same for me. The enemy now is cancer. We know that technology works.”
Moderna CEO sees a bright future in cancer vaccines
Bancel said Moderna’s mRNA approach is the key to its success. Moderna uses mRNA to enter immune cells and instruct those cells to make particular proteins that can help fight that person’s cancer. Bancel said he sees great potential for this approach, with a market that could even outpace his coronavirus vaccine.
“This could be as big as Keytruda or bigger,” he added, referencing Merck’s successful cancer therapy that generated $15.5 billion in sales during the first nine months of 2022.
“Now, we’re an oncology company,” Bancel said, “and we could be one of the biggest oncology companies in the future.”
Bancel said that Moderna would launch multiple late-stage studies in 2023 to test its cancer vaccine not only in melanoma patients but also in other types of cancer together with its partner, Merck. Merck paid $250 million earlier this year to co-develop Moderna’s vaccine, extending a partnership between the two drugmakers that began in 2016.
However, these trials are likely to take years to complete, Bancel acknowledged, meaning potential FDA approval and commercial launch are The biotech company Moderna just announced a significant breakthrough in its efforts to treat cancer, which could represent a breakthrough in the treatment of the disease within several years. .
Analysts are excited but cautious about the long-term success of the vaccine.
SVB Securities analyst Daina Graybosch, who covers Merck, said in a note on Tuesday that the results exceeded her expectations, but she wants to see more detailed results than those provided in the Moderna and Merck press release. The results of the study have yet to be presented at a conference or published in a journal. Graybosch cautioned that other experimental cancer drugs showed promise in phase 2 studies only to disappoint in phase 3.
Brad Loncar, a biotech investor who runs an exchange-traded fund that tracks immuno-oncology companies, told Insider it was a good move for Moderna to focus on a smaller group of patients who first underwent surgery to remove your cancer. But Loncar added that other types of cancer are more difficult to treat than melanoma, which he called a “low-hanging fruit” for immunotherapies.
“The fact that it has been successful in melanoma is definitely not a guarantee that it will be successful in other types of cancer,” Loncar said.
