Merck and Moderna to start pivotal cancer vaccine trial

Mer­ck and Mod­er­na will be­gin their Phase III can­cer vac­cine tri­al in Au­gust, ac­cord­ing to a fed­er­al clin­i­cal tri­als data­base.

The close­ly watched tri­al could help the duo win the first per­son­al­ized can­cer vac­cine ap­proval, though that is far down the line. The shot is giv­en along­side Mer­ck’s Keytru­da to skin can­cer pa­tients af­ter surgery with the goal of stop­ping that can­cer from re­turn­ing.

In a Phase II study with 157 melanoma pa­tients, the vac­cine plus Keytru­da re­duced the risk of the can­cer re­turn­ing or death by 44% com­pared to Keytru­da alone. And fol­low-up da­ta pre­sent­ed at AS­CO’s an­nu­al meet­ing last month showed the cus­tom vac­cine plus Keytru­da re­duced the risk of pa­tients de­vel­op­ing dead­ly metas­tases by 65% com­pared to Keytru­da alone.

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