The world’s first personalized messenger RNA-based vaccine against melanoma – which also has the potential to stop lung, bladder and kidney cancer – is being tested in a phase 3 clinical trial at an international level.
The “revolutionary” vaccine is personalized for each person in just a few weeks.
It tells the body to “hunt” cancer cells and prevent the lethal disease from returning.
Following the phase 2 study of this vaccine, in the development of which the pharmaceutical companies Moderna and MSD (known as Merck in the United States and Canada) are involved, a considerable reduction in the risk of cancer recurrence was found in patients diagnosed with melanoma .
A final stage of testing the vaccine, phase 3, has been launched and is being led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH).
The coordinator of the study, Dr. Heather Shaw, said that the vaccine has the potential to cure people diagnosed with melanoma and is also being tested for other types of cancer.
The vaccine is an individualized neoantigen therapy (INT) and is sometimes referred to as a cancer vaccine.
It was designed to stimulate the immune system to fight back against a specific type of cancer in the patient.
To create the vaccine, a tumor sample is surgically removed, DNA sequencing is performed and artificial intelligence is used. The result is a personalized cancer vaccine specific to each patient’s tumor.
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