This morning, Moderna announced good news on the vaccine front: The pharmaceutical company shared that its experimental mRNA skin cancer vaccine — when combined with Merck immunotherapy medication — reduced the rate of recurrence and death from melanoma by 44% in patients with stage 3 and 4 skin cancer.
The trial enrolled 157 skin cancer patients who had already undergone surgery to remove malignant tumors. Select patients chosen at random were given both the vaccine and immunotherapy (in this case, the brand name Keytruda), while the rest were only given the latter. The trial groups participated in this study for one year The vaccine, which contains mRNA — a “messenger” that delivers the blueprint for creating specific proteins to the body’s cells — is also found in the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a potential HIV vaccine that’s in trials.
