Pharmaceutical partners Moderna and Merck announced on Wednesday that their novel mRNA-based vaccine—individually tailored to target a patient's unique cancer mutations—was effective in a late-stage clinical trial of patients with melanoma, one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer.

The announcement was scant on details, but if the success holds, it stands to realize the high aspirations for both mRNA vaccines and individualized cancer-targeting medicines in cancer therapy, providing a first success for both treatment types.

The Phase 3 trial included 1,137 patients who had stage IIB–IV melanoma that had been surgically removed prior to their treatment in the trial. Patients were randomized 2-1 to receive either a combination treatment of the tailored mRNA vaccine (intismeran or mRNA-4157) with Merck's established monoclonal antibody cancer treatment Keytruda, or they received treatment with Keytruda alone. Both patient groups were treated for about a year. The trial was placebo-controlled and double-blind, meaning neither the doctors nor the patients knew which treatment patients were randomly assigned to receive.

Read full article

Comments

Backlash to Trump's vaccine order on Monday has been swift and sharp, with various public health and medical organizations and independent experts calling it "dangerous," "unscientific," "false and misleading," "so wrong," and saying it is "putting children's health at risk."

The responses are unsurprising; the medical and health communities have consistently fought against the anti-vaccine, anti-science agendas pushed by Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has no background in science, medicine, or public health. The American Academy of Pediatrics—which called the order "not only disheartening but dangerous"—is leading a lawsuit against previous changes to federal childhood vaccine recommendations under Trump and Kennedy. In March, the organization, along with other medical groups, won a temporary injunction reversing most of the changes.

However, less expected among the scorn for Trump's order is the immediate pushback from the pharmaceutical industry.

Read full article

Comments