New mRNA Vaccine Reduces Risk of Melanoma Recurrence by Over 40 Percent

The vaccine is personalized to a patient's tumor, and results from the Phase 3 trial are yet another example of the promise of mRNA vaccines in treating cancer. The new mRNA vaccine is waiting on FDA approval but has shown great promise in Phase 3 clinical trials. An experimental vaccine offers new hope to patients with melanoma, one of the most aggressive forms of skin cancer . The pharmaceutical companies Merck and Moderna released the results of a Phase 3 clinical trial that evaluated the efficacy of a personalized mRNA-based vaccine that, when combined with immunotherapy, reduced the risk of disease recurrence or death by 42 percent compared to treatment with the immunotherapy drug alone. Georgina Long, medical director of the Australian Melanoma Institute and the study's principal investigator, said in a statement that these results are "transformative" and "have the potential to make a foundational shift in how we treat patients with earlier-stage melanoma."