Skin cancer: Moderna chief hopes to create therapeutic vaccine by 2025

What if there was a vaccine for skin cancer? This is the promise of Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel after new positive results obtained by the laboratory. “It is believed that the product could potentially be launched on an accelerated basis in some countries by 2025,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

This therapeutic vaccine is not designed to prevent the disease from developing, like a regular vaccine, but to treat it when it appears. However, it uses the same principle: helping the patient’s immune system protect itself from disease.

According to Stéphane Bancel, today therapeutic vaccines represent the real hope in oncology, “immunotherapy 2.0”. In a study of about 160 people with advanced melanoma, taking the vaccine along with the cancer drug Keytruda reduced the risk of the disease coming back by 49% over a three-year period. were treated only with an anticancer drug.

More chance of survival

Last year, Moderna already announced the results of two years of monitoring, according to which risks decreased by 44%. “The difference in survival is growing. The more time passes, the more you realize that the benefit of Moderna’s treatment is “significant,” says a company executive. A treatment that helps “one in two people” compared to those who received the “best treatment on the market” in oncology is “huge”.

So, he said, these data could allow treatment to begin without waiting for the results of the phase 3 trial. It began in July on more than 1,000 people, and patient enrollment should be completed “in the second half of 2024.”

“At this stage we can start negotiations with regulators to accelerate the conditional approval of the product,” explains Stéphane Bancel. The condition for confirmation of authorization then was “the success of the third stage, which will confirm the data that we see today.”

“Individualization” of the vaccine

The treatment has already been designated an “innovative therapy” by the US Drug Agency, a designation aimed at speeding up its development. The European Medicines Agency has also given it a similar status (“Priority Medicines”).

Moderna’s therapeutic vaccine is designed based on mutations read in the DNA of a patient’s tumor, who undergoes surgery to remove it before receiving treatment. Thus, it is not just personalization of the vaccine, it is “individualization”, continues Stéphane Bancel. Moderna “physically produces a product” that is made “just for you.”

A recent study estimates that about 57,000 people died worldwide from melanoma, one of the most serious forms of skin cancer, in 2020. Other tumor types are also being considered: Moderna has begun a phase 3 study against lung cancer.

Other companies, such as BioNTech, are also working on personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines.