Cancer vaccine prevents deadly melanoma from returning or spreading in landmark trial
“Here, AI is a tool that allows you in a reasonable amount of time, with a reasonable amount of resources … to come up with a vaccine for that individual person.”
What comes next
After the successful Phase 3 outcome, Merck and Moderna announced plans to engage with regulatory authorities worldwide, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, about potential regulatory filings.
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Plans are in the works to test the vaccine technology against other hard-to-treat cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney cancers.
“I think the underlying concept of targeting a particular tumor with the specific markers on that tumor is generalizable, meaning you could do this with different kinds of skin cancer or different kinds of cancer in general,” Alam agreed. “It’s very exciting.”
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Although the companies said the results were significant and meaningful, the findings are still early and did not reveal how long patients remained cancer-free.
The Phase 3 announcement also did not establish whether the treatment ultimately helps patients live longer.
By tailoring treatment to the biology of each patient’s disease, this approach has the potential to establish a new paradigm in the adjuvant melanoma setting when given in combination with Keytruda, a standard-of-care immunotherapy. (iStock)
The recurrence-free survival results were also based on investigator assessments rather than an independent central review, the release noted.
The study only looked at people with specific stages of skin melanoma who had surgery and no prior drug treatments, so the results may not apply to other types or stages of cancer.
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Merck said the treatments’ side effects were similar to those seen in earlier studies, with no new safety concerns identified.
Alam reiterated that the vaccine seems to have both a “tremendous benefit [and] good side effect profile.”
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“When you’re getting very strong cancer medications, even when they work, the toll on the patient is often terrible,” he said. “It alters their life during the course of treatment where there’s tremendous suffering.
“The nice thing about this, because it’s so targeted, it doesn’t damage many of your normal cells … so the side effects are really mild — a little fatigue, a little chills, some injection side pain.”
Khloe Quill is a lifestyle writer with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.
Article source: https://www.foxnews.com/health/cancer-vaccine-prevents-deadly-melanoma-returning-spreading-landmark-trial