(VitalNews.org) – Moderna and Merck released three-year data from their experimental vaccine after giving the vaccine to patients with deadly skin cancer. The results were positive in patients who took the vaccine and therapy Keytruda.
Moderna’s vaccine and Merck’s Keytruda improved survival and showed efficiency in a study with patients who suffered from a deadly form of skin cancer. Both Merck and Moderna will be presenting the data surrounding these results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The vaccine is another key part of Moderna’s lineup of vaccines, which they have been producing after the demand for their COVID vaccine declined.
Within the data, nearly seventy-five percent of patients who took the combination were living with no signs of their cancer returning. Regardless of the number of mutations in the tumor and the amount of the PD-L1 protein they had, patients across all subgroups saw positive results. The data shows that the vaccine can treat melanoma patients across a “broad range.”
Said Merck’s head of global clinical development of oncology, Marjorie Green, “As we look at the three-year updates, what’s really exciting to me seeing the durability of that data.”
The companies announced that patients with severe forms of cancer were forty-nine percent less likely to die or have their cancer return than those who just took Keytruda alone.
Some common side effects came with the vaccine, including fatigue, chills, and pain at the injection spot, but the majority of the side effects were mild.
The vaccine is customized to the patient’s tumors after surgical removal, with the ability to attack specific mutations by training the immune system.
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