Vaccine could be used to help treat melanoma
AUSTIN, Texas – When you think of Moderna mRNA vaccines, you probably think of COVID-19. But soon, you could think of cancer.
Texas Oncology locations in Austin and Dallas are two of the 165 global sites testing a Moderna mRNA vaccine for the deadly melanoma skin cancer. Similar mRNA vaccines also are being tested on colon and pancreatic cancers. Merck is running this study, because it combines using Merck’s standard Keytruda immunotherapy with this Moderna vaccine.
“It’s exciting technology,” said Dr. Jeff Yorio, Texas Oncology’s Austin investigator for this clinical trial. Patients have been excited to enroll in the study, Yorio said, because “it’s personalized immunotherapy. It’s the ability to use your immune system to fight that person’s melanoma.”
To create each person’s vaccine, Texas Oncology will send a sample of that patient’s tumor to Moderna, much in the same way it sends tumors to be genetically sequenced to make better treatment decisions. Then Moderna will create a series of mRNA vaccines that will recognize that patient’s specific tumor and trigger their immune system to fight that cancer, much in the same way Moderna trained its COVID-19 vaccines to recognize the coronavirus and prompt the immune system to fight it.
The participants will still receive the current treatment, which is surgery to remove the tumor and then a year of immunotherapy using Merck’s Keytruda. After surgery, study patients will start on the immunotherapy and then once the vaccine is created, receive nine vaccines during a period of four to six
months.
Just like in other mRNA vaccines, the vaccine does not use an active disease.
“In no way would they be able to get melanoma from this,” Yorio said.
In the U.S., for every 100,000 people, 23 people are diagnosed with melanoma each year and two people die from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Melanoma is the bad guy of skin cancers because it’s got a much higher risk to spread and metastasize,” Yorio said.
It also has no rules to where it will spread, he said. Sometimes it’s the lungs or liver or brain, other times it’s muscles and bones. Areas in the southern United States including Texas have higher rates of melanoma because of increased sun exposure, he said, which is why testing this vaccine in Austin is so exciting.
Globally, Merck is hoping to enroll 1,089 participants. The patients will be randomized as to who receives the vaccine and who receives a placebo. Participants and investigators will not know what they are receiving.
The patients have to have either stage 2, 3 or 4 melanoma that has been surgically removed. The study is a phase 3 trial, usually the last phase, and is expected to last two years.