Hope for many patients. Individualized treatment Messenger RNAdeveloped by Moderna and Merck MSD laboratories, reduced 49% risk of relapse and death during skin cancer, reports The echoes. This post-operative treatment, administered after extraction of the melanoma, had already been presented in December 2022 with encouraging results: 44% reduction in the rate of recurrence or death of patients in advanced stages. The effectiveness of the treatment has therefore progressedexplains Stéphane Bancel, the general director of Moderna, who assures the newspaper that he “a confirmation of product performance”.
During phase 2, mRNA treatment was tested out of 157 sick patients in advanced stages separated into two groups. One took the standard anti-cancer treatment with Keytruda, an immunotherapy from the American laboratory Merck MSD. The other was given Keytruda along with the mRNA treatment. After three years of hindsight, the result is clear: this last combination proved decisive with a rate of recurrence and death reduced almost by half. Stéphane Bancel emphasizes that nearly two out of three patients “avoid metastases and survive“.
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Given these promising results, a phase 3 clinical trial will be carried out in July. This is a large-scale test on 1,089 patients in 25 countries, including France. Patient recruitment should be completed by the end of 2024. The goal? An early launch of the treatment from 2025, “if agencies judge phase 2 data positively and grant accelerated approval» to this, hopes Stéphane Bancel, who is already planning to produce the vaccine in “a new factory in Massachusetts, USA”. Otherwise, the treatment will be commercialized in 2028 at the end of phase 3.
Melanomas represent 10% of skin cancers and affect 19 people out of 100,000. The echoes. In France, almost 18,000 cases of melanoma were recorded in 2023.
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