Moderna and Merck advance personalized cancer vaccine toward FDA approval

Moderna says its personalised cancer vaccine has worked in a large clinical trial. The vaccine, called intismeran, targets melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. Moderna developed it with pharmaceutical company Merck over ten years. In the trial, patients who received intismeran alongside Merck's drug Keytruda did 42% better than patients who took Keytruda alone. Moderna's chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, has said the companies will apply for approval from the FDA, the US medicines regulator. He expects approval to come in 2027. The vaccine uses mRNA technology, similar to some Covid-19 vaccines. It works by helping the body's immune system attack a patient's specific tumour. Moderna also plans to test the vaccine against other types of cancer.