IT·Science News
Personalised cancer vaccine cuts melanoma relapse risk: a turning point, or too soon to say?
The first personalised cancer vaccine has cut the risk of the disease returning in a major trial, BBC News reports. The scientists involved say the results could mark a turning point in cancer treatment, bringing personalised medicine a step closer.
India’s ThePrint sets out the details. The vaccine, intismeran autogene from Moderna and Merck, uses mRNA technology and is designed around the mutations in each patient’s own tumour. The Phase 3 trial involved more than 1,100 patients at 157 sites, all of whom had surgery to remove high-risk melanoma. Half received the vaccine plus the immunotherapy drug Keytruda; the other half received Keytruda alone. The combination reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 42%. Among patients still cancer-free six months after starting treatment, the reduction was 58%. Georgina Long of the Melanoma Institute Australia presented the findings at the 2026 ESMO Congress.
How each outlet framed it
- BBC News — the breakthrough: a possible turning point that brings personalised medicine closer.
- ThePrint — the caveats: the full results have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the 58% figure comes from a subgroup, Moderna and Merck funded the trial, and similar personalised mRNA approaches have failed to prevent recurrence in bowel and head and neck cancer trials.
Where the numbers differ: the headline result is a 42% lower risk for all patients in the trial; the larger 58% figure applies only to a subgroup and, ThePrint says, should be read more cautiously.
What we don't know yet: when, or whether, regulators will approve it. ThePrint notes that the vaccine has no approval yet and that reviews could take years in some countries.