Giving the new personalized vaccine in combination with a medicine has been successful in preventing the recurrence of skin cancer in patients during the trial.
This is being considered a major change in the treatment of cancer. This vaccine has been prepared by two pharmaceutical companies named Merck and Moderna. During the trial, this vaccine was given after surgery to patients suffering from high-risk melanoma (a type of skin cancer).
Initial results show that the vaccine increased the length of time patients remained cancer-free. However, how long this effect lasts is not yet clear.
Cancer experts have called it a major success, but have also advised caution, because the full results of the trial have not been released yet. Now independent experts will review and examine these results.
Even after the trial is over, the vaccine will be approved only when the regulators allow it. Only after this, it will have to go through another approval process before it becomes available on Britain's NHS (National Health Service).
This vaccine, called Intismaren, was given in combination with a drug called Keytruda, which is an immunotherapy drug. Keytruda is already used in the treatment of cancer.
The companies said that taking both the drug and the vaccine together significantly prolonged how long patients remained cancer-free, compared to taking Keytruda alone.
Apart from this, the risk of the disease spreading to other organs reduced after the vaccine.
The Phase III trial included more than 1,000 patients suffering from stage 2, stage 3 or stage 4 of high-risk melanoma cancer.
Some of these patients had large tumors in a particular part of the body, while some had cancer that had spread to other parts of the body.
Merck and Moderna are calling it a personalized vaccine, which means that this vaccine works by targeting the tumor of an individual patient.
To create this new vaccine, scientists used mRNA technology. This technology was used for some Covid-19 vaccines.
In this, specific mutations within the cancer cells are targeted by surgically removing a small part of the patient's tumor and then sequencing its DNA.
That is, it is a personalized anti-cancer injection that is specific to the patient's tumor and instructs the immune system to recognize and attack any remaining tumor cells.
Both these companies are testing other similar personalized vaccines for lung, bladder and kidney cancer.
Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said that this finding is an important moment in the direction of cancer treatment. After this announcement, the shares of Moderna and Merck have risen rapidly.
Cancer experts have also described this news as positive, but they emphasize that these findings are still preliminary.
Dr. Talisia Quallo, head of prevention and early detection at Cancer Research UK, said that this research is promising, but at present the interim data has yet to be fully reviewed.
He added: “It is vital that research like this continues to be funded so that more people with cancer have access to personalized treatment options that can help them live longer and better lives.”
"This is certainly good news for melanoma patients, but this study has broader implications. It proves the principle that personalized cancer vaccines can work," said Dr. Lennard Lee, a medical oncologist and associate professor at the University of Oxford.
