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Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma
- alexthedigger 2mo agoPhone cancer is way worse and more prevalent than skin cancer. And it looks and acts the same. Let me know when they find a cure.
- jambalaya8 2mo ago[flagged]
- tnel77 2mo agoWhy?
- jambalaya8 2mo ago[flagged]
- consumer451 2mo ago> (and yes, I have a background in this) Care to share what that is exactly?
- jambalaya8 2mo ago[flagged]
- jimbo808 2mo agoPeople were assured that COVID vaccine mRNA would disappear within days and the spike protein would short-lived. Yet Yale-led researchers later detected circulating S1 and full-length spike as late as 709 days after vaccination. They also left the public in the dark about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially in young males, many of whom experienced permanent heart tissue damage. That is a massive gap between what the public was told and what later evidence found. If a technology makes your cells produce a biologically active protein, regulators should establish where it goes, how long it can persist, and what prolonged exposure does before mass deployment. https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-vaccination-syndrome-indicate-future-research-directions https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-vaccina... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.25322379v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.25322379v...
- estearum 2mo ago> They also left the public in the dark about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially in young males, many of whom experienced permanent heart tissue damage. Not true. This was correctly disclosed in the trial results as a super super super tail risk. Once they realized that the (minuscule) risk could be even further mitigated by simply spacing out the booster schedule, they adjusted that (Feb 2022). Nobody was "left in the dark"
- jambalaya8 2mo agoagain. over how long.
- estearum 2mo agoWhat?
- jambalaya8 2mo agothe risk of heart issues.
- lern_too_spel 2mo agoWhat's more, they found that myocarditis risk was higher in the unvaccinated population after infection. This information didn't get to the so-called "skeptics," who willfully ignored data that didn't fit their conspiracy theory. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
- jambalaya8 2mo agoI also get a kick out of people only looking for side effects they think of as side effects, since they are what people think of as side effects for completely different types of technologies.
- GenerWork 2mo agoThis is great news! I think people forget how anti-skin cancer protocols even as simple as applying suntan lotion weren't as popular as recent as 50-60 years ago. Lots of "sun children" of the 50s and 60s are now feeling the repercussions of only applying baby oil and are getting hit with lots of melanoma.
- moronicles 2mo agoI knew HN was geriatric, but damn
- Insanity 2mo ago+1. Also, just to call out, it doesn't need to be _warm_ for you to need sunblock. Even when it's cooler / cloudier out there you can still get skin damage. Look for UV rating rather than temperature. Conversely, it being hot doesn't imply high-UV either.
- jjice 2mo agoI didn't know about the UV index or what it meant until like three years ago. It blows my mind I went that long without understanding. It was actually wonderful to learn that I could just see if I needed sunblock based on a 0-10 scale. We never wore sunscreen as kids because we didn't burn. I probably have had three sunburns in my life. Learned once I became an adult that that wasn't sound logic...
- Barbing 2mo agoI think the Apple Watch or the Weather app or something finally taught me UV index about the same time. Has this information always been readily available? Similarly mind blown about it.
- NamTaf 2mo agoIn Australia in at least the 00s, possibly the 90s, I remember it being reported during the weather forecast on the 6pm nightly news. But Australia has always had a famously robust sun health education programme
- epistasis 2mo agoEver since I first heard of them a decade ago, it seemed that mRNA therapeutic vaccines were going to be the next wave of massive improvements in care. It's taken a bit longer than I had expected, and it's not that mRNA is the only way to make these sorts of vaccines, it's just so much better than the alternatives. I'm very very excited to see what comes next.
- consumer451 2mo agoThis appears to be a potentially huge win for health. The market has Moderna up 153% at time of writing, which is some sort of validation I suppose. Related stories: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/merck-and-modernas-personalized-cancer-vaccine-slows-recurrence-ph-3-trial https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/merck-and-modernas-per... https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/merck-moderna-say-melanoma-skin-cancer-vaccine-meets-goals-large-trial-2026-08-19/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/merck-moderna-say-m... https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succeeds-in-preventing-melanoma-from-returning-540e9e18 https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succ...
- Jyaif 2mo agooh nice. If it goes up another 100% I may not lose money on this stock anymore.
- consumer451 2mo agoI mean, this appears to be validation of mRNA in general, right?
- ianlevesque 2mo agoSaving a couple million people in the pandemic wasn’t validation enough?
- consumer451 2mo ago100%. What I meant to say was that this proves that it wasn't somehow a one trick pony.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2mo agoThere is also a mRNU flu vaccine now: https://www.modernatx.com/ir-insights-mflusiva https://www.modernatx.com/ir-insights-mflusiva I don't know if that counts as the same "trick" or not as it's another antiviral vaccine. Not that I disagree with you. I read that this mRNA flu vaccine can be more effective then the regular annual flu shot, simply because the time to create it is shorter, therefor the guess at what strains will circulate that year is more accurate. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41701031/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41701031/ But it is yet more validation. mRNA technology is here, get used to it.
- MartinMond 2mo agoI listened to a great podcast on this just a month ago - too bad that I thought all of this would obviously be priced in already… https://virological.podigee.io/51-21-cancer-vaccines-how-the-immune-system-learns-to-recognize-tumors https://virological.podigee.io/51-21-cancer-vaccines-how-the...
- henry2023 2mo agoEven if you were to optimally price in all available information you still have uncertainty of what will actually happen. i.e. A 1 dollar coin flip has an expected value of 50c before it’s thrown and it will collapse either to zero or to one after the uncertainty is resolved.
- bluGill 2mo agoI don't believe the efficient market hypothesis. However even if you do, new information has arrived and that will affect the price.
- pipolo 2mo agoHard to price in the political factors now involved in Moderna's success or lack of success.
- epistasis 2mo agoI think the "expected value" was priced in, but regardless of the result, this trial would move the stock price towards that direction. Biotech is one of the very very very few areas of the stockmarket where specialist knowledge generates alpha. Trolling through random biotechs, learning about their tech, and investing in the most promising applications of that tech in the most impactful areas is something that happens somewhat on publicly traded markets. With tech, most of that happens pre-IPO.
- quickthrowman 2mo agoIt was priced in, the share price prior to the news being released was taking into account a probability measurement of the trial succeeding or failing. You can’t price in both options of a binary outcome simultaneously, so part of the equity price was functionally equivalent to a call option on the outcome of the drug trial that only resolved after the trial results are announced. It’s similar to the situation where a company puts out a public offer to buy another company at say, $50 a share on a day that the acquisition target is trading at $40/share. If the stock of the target company is trading at $46/share, the market is pricing in the probability of the acquisition not happening. If the market knew the acquisition would happen with 100% certainty, the price of the target company shares would be equal to the buyout share price offer. You can assume the risk of the acquisition not happening by purchasing shares at $46, and if it does end up going through, you earn $4 a share from assuming that risk.
- reenorap 2mo ago[flagged]
- Someone1234 2mo ago> For all the hate I have for the COVID vaccine Can you clarify that? It saved 100K+ lives even by incredibly conservative estimates, and allowed life to returned to normal at least a year earlier than otherwise.
- declan_roberts 2mo agoI can't speak for other people but I was upset to enter a medical era where bureaucrats were forcing medical decisions on me. I was forced to get it or lose my job despite 1) working remotely, 2) having already had Covid and 3) being healthy and not at risk of Covid death but being the largest risk for myocarditis.
- martythemaniak 2mo agoIs that when you entered that era? Or did you enter it when you were a newborn in the hospital, or a kid entering school?
- searine 2mo agoBecause, it is always all about you...
- DaSHacka 2mo agoClearly his issue is not understanding its actually all about 'grandma'.
- declan_roberts 2mo ago"Think about grandma" was the covid version of "somebody think of the children"
- nearbyyak 2mo agoHuge, uplifting, news, hope the study will bear further fruit. Considering that 90% of all clinical trials fail, it's good to read about a truly promising one for once.
- Noaidi 2mo agoI for one would like to see the data rather than a press release. Is this even serious? A press release with no link to outside twitter? I feel like everything companies, and presidents, say now is directly geared to triggering AI trades. The only thing they are looking at with this drug is people living one more month over existing drugs. THIS IS NOTHING. "The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab," https://www.merck.com/news/keytruda-pembrolizumab-mercks-anti-pd-1-therapy-demonstrates-superior-survival-progression-free-survival-and-overall-response-rate-compared-to-ipilimumab-an-anti-ctla-4-therapy/ https://www.merck.com/news/keytruda-pembrolizumab-mercks-ant... The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab, 95% CI, 0.46-0.72 for 2-week group and 0.47-0.72 for 3-week group, respectively). The estimated 6-month PFS rates for the KEYTRUDA and ipilimumab arms were 47.3 percent, 46.4 percent and 26.5 percent, respectively. One-year OS for KEYTRUDA was 74.1 percent (2-week group) and 68.4 percent (3-week group) compared to 58.2 percent for ipilimumab (HR 0.63 [95% CI, 0.47-0.83, P=0.00052] for the 2-week group and HR 0.69 [95% CI, 0.52-0.90, P=0.00358] for the 3-week group). At the time of analysis, median overall survival was not reached in any treatment group.
- hyperhello 2mo agoNo it isn’t. They did a test with great specificity and got undeniable P values. Now they can refine the action and start saving people. This is a huge, huge win.
- calebkaiser 2mo ago1. That's not what progression-free survival means. 2. I don't think AI was mentioned once in this press release. 3. This drug was approved for trial in 2014, so if it had something to do with deep learning, that would actually be a massive announcement. 4. The paragraph immediately following the one you clipped talks about Overall Response Rate (ORR) and throughout the release they discuss Overall Survival (OS). 5. This is not "NOTHING" in statistical terms, but even more so to people with melanoma.
- jaumesnts 2mo ago[dead]
- amluto 2mo agoSubstantially better link: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-moderna-announce-phase-3-interpath-001-trial-of-intismeran-autogene-plus-keytruda-met-endpoints-of-recurrence-free-survival-rfs-and-distant-metastasis-free-survival-dmfs-in-patient/ https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-moderna-announce-phase-... Still no actual Phase 3 data presented.
- anotherpaul 2mo agoThis content is geo/IP fenced
- CamelCaseName 2mo agoHope this helps: https://archive.ph/SQQ97 https://archive.ph/SQQ97
- ricardobayes 2mo agoYes, however the trial succeeded. But by "how much", is not yet released. This trial was not against placebo, but the already existing, and effective Keytruda treatment.
- cogman10 2mo agoI believe both were done with Keytruda. Control was Keytruda without the mRNA treatment. So this should answer the question of "how much better is this with the best we currently have".
- unsupp0rted 1mo agoWe're in the dark ages of "effective" at the moment. But now we're starting to get there.
- grokcodec 2mo agoIn other news, your barber thinks you need a haircut. Until there is a proven net overall health benefit to this therapy, I wouldn't waste much ink on it. Also, can someone please tell me how one controls the dose for an mRNA therapy ?
- rob74 2mo agoIf you actually had melanoma (a very aggressive type of skin cancer) you would be glad for one more chance of maybe still being alive a few years from now.
- grokcodec 2mo agonot if you dropped dead from a heart attack after your therapy. Are you familiar with vioxx ? https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and...
- ted_dunning 2mo agoIF you dropped dead a decade later, it would be a fantastic trade-off. Vioxx was a long-term problem. Having that problem instead would be a great trade-off relative to untreated melanoma.
- xboxnolifes 2mo agoHow does one control the dose for anything? Why are you worried about mRNA vaccines in particular?
- grokcodec 2mo agoRadiation dose, for example, is precisely measured - we know exactly how much radiation the body is exposed to during therapy. mRNA products work by making our cells produce the desired protein/drug. There is no way of controlling how many cells are producing the drug and for how long they are producing it - ergo there is no way of controlling the dose. I hate to break it to you but they have found people producing spike protein over 3 years after getting the covid shot.
- ricardobayes 2mo agoAccording to Gemini, Moderna uses machine learning to speed up sequence selection and mRNA optimization. After all, this is not a mass-produced vaccine, but a personalized one.
- danjl 2mo agoWill this targeted approach be beneficial to other cancer types? Is there any data or theory about this class of drugs as a more general therapy?
- paulpauper 2mo agoIndividualized immune cancer therapy has been touted as the next big thing for half a century. It's nothing new, and with few exceptions, such as skin cancer, has failed to yield much. scientists, for decades, have tired to harness the immune system to attackcancer and it almost never works.
- HedonicEscal8r 2mo agoPersonalized mRNA vaccines are in fact, extremely new, and only made possible by recent advances across multiple fields. This comment reveals a total lack of basic understanding on this topic.
- cogman10 2mo agoI believe the comment was talking specifically about immunotherapy rather than personalized mRNA. But I'd agree it's still misinformed as immunotherapy has been a game changer across multiple cancers.
- HedonicEscal8r 2mo agou/danjl was originally asking about "this class of drugs", which is more reasonably interpreted as referring to personalized mRNA vaccines rather than the much broader concept of (personalized or not) immunotherapy. The comment is wrong because it's stupid. Just because we've known that personalized immunotherapy was a promising idea for a long time, and have been trying it with the limited tools we had (CAR T being the poster child, and while an incredible advancement for blood cancers and many other diseases, it is notoriously dangerous and expensive), does not mean we had the technology to accomplish it. Today's results are only possible because of recent advancements in multiple fields, and to respond with "they've tried immunotherapy for decades" is profoundly ignorant. You may as well say, "scientists have been trying to cure cancer for years."
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoThere are a zillion news sources for this: OP what would possess you to pick the (largely dead) right wing Musk-owned Twitter ("X" )?
- DaSHacka 2mo agoHas more posts than HN, yet would you describe this platform as 'dead'?
- attila-lendvai 2mo ago/me shakes head in disbelief and closes the tab
- Taikhoom10 2mo agoYeah while a positive step, I do not understand a 90% stock increase.
- andxor 2mo agoOh yeah? Show me your discounted cash flow analysis.
- Plutoberth 2mo agoSee it as $60B value total among Moderna and Merck for the success of the trial, not 150% increase.
- missedthecue 1mo agoSo they added $30B market cap for a drug that would do by my napkin estimate about ~$7B average annual sales for 20 years as a front line treatment. Based on that alone, $30B in added market cap isn't enough. How much would you pay for $150B in high margin revenue? But even more is the validation of this new custom MRNA novel cancer treating platform. If you take this data result to be a 'proof of concept', the expected value of the rest of their pipeline is suddenly worth a lot more. Of course, this is all assuming the data is accurate and the drug gets approved, neither of which are 100% guaranteed.
- Taikhoom10 1mo ago[dead]
- hummuscience 2mo agoMy father is currently dying of malignant melanoma with brain metastasis... I wish this treatment was available a few years ago.
- exolymph 2mo agoThat is devastating. How are you doing?
- hummuscience 1mo agoCoping. It's been a long process. When I saw his first diagnosis (he was diagnosed very late) I read the papers and knew that his chances are slim. It's hard seeing him like this. 63 years old. Going from completely functioning to non-verbal in 3 months fucks you up
- pfdietz 2mo agoImmune therapy didn't help? Darn.
- Gibbon1 2mo agoImmune therapy is hit or miss. Friends lung cancer was exquisitely sensitive to it. Stage 4 to no sign of disease. Another friend with melanoma immune therapy didn't seem to help at all. Melanoma is usually completely resistant to traditional cancer drugs. So that sometimes immune therapy works is very welcome.
- hummuscience 1mo agoSadly it didn't. And it also lead to extreme bleeding in the brain metastasis that we had to stop it. Switched to BRAF/MEK inhibitors and that looked good for a few months until it didn't anymore.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2mo agoI'm so sorry to hear that, but thank you for sharing your story to highlight the importance of this!
- toephu2 2mo ago[flagged]
- kinj28 2mo agoMy father has gastric melonama and pretty much last few days left — does someone with knowledge know if this vaccine can be of any help? Or any registry available?
- bell-cot 2mo agoDeepest sympathies, and I'm no oncologist - but I think that'd be like trying to patch the hull of the Titanic after her stern has lifted out of the water. So many cascading failures are in motion by then that saving him really isn't possible.
- agumonkey 2mo agoSome say that mRNA therapies are getting better and better on a wider range of tumor types, anybody from the industry can confirm ?
- dbcooper 1mo agoA comment from Derek Lowe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/merck-and-moderna-s-melanoma-results https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/merck-and-moderna-... >Postscript: Our Secretary of Health and Human Services of course cancelled $500 million in mRNA vaccine R&D contracts (22 different programs) last year, and cited a pile of misinformation (and cluelessly misunderstood research citations) to justify it. Our Director of the National Institutes of Health was apparently just fine with this decision and cited mRNA vaccines’ alleged failure to “earn public trust” as one of his reasons, along with public statements that “the mRNA platform is no longer viable”. I have a number of suggestions for each of these individuals and their supporters about how they might spend the rest of their day, and will be glad to send details if they contact me.
- mancerayder 1mo agoHow are BioNtech's trials doing? Are these two companies the ones to cure cancer (for the rich, being that these therapies require custom bio engineering).
- ijustlovemath 1mo agoI got my first one at age 27. A third just got removed. Living with the constant mole vigilance of that is rough, but I am glad I've learned to identify them. I think knowing the ABCDEs of it should be more widely spread, as removing a mole is a much nicer alternative to having to take margins in a highly mobile place.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1mo agoAgreed. As a reminder here are the ABCDE arguments to get extra worried about a mole. Asymetrical (shape of the mole) Border (irregular? Unclear delimitation?) Color (has it multiple colors?) Diameter (has it a >6mm diameter? An indicator that it might start vertical growth iirc) Evolution (has it changed recently?)
- trencedamp 1mo agoI wish people would find a decent source for these stories in order to post them on here instead of sending us to a tweet. I'm not on Twitterx and it's a mini nightmare on a mobile browser
- dzhiurgis 1mo agoContrary to popular belief, twitter/x is completely fine.