Moderna and Merck shares surge after melanoma vaccine success

The two companies have been working on the science behind the vaccine, called intismeran autogene, for more than a decade. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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A personalized vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and Merck & Co. Inc. helped reduce the recurrence of melanoma in a large, late-stage trial, raising expectations for treating the deadliest form of skin cancer and showing the promise of the embattled mRNA technology.

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The trial met its main goal of showing that the vaccine, combined with Merck’s immune drug Keytruda, reduced melanoma recurrences more than the immunotherapy alone. It also slowed the cancer’s spread to new areas of the body, the companies said in a statement Wednesday.

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Moderna shares more than doubled and set an intraday record, though the stock remains well short of its COVID-era highs. Merck climbed more than 10 per cent as of 10 a.m. in New York.

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The study, the first positive final-stage trial for any mRNA-based cancer therapy, is a welcome development for both companies. It provides the strongest evidence yet that the technology that made Moderna a household name during the pandemic will have a successful second act. For Merck, facing a patent loss for its best-selling drug Keytruda, it offers a key new market for future growth.

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“It is an important step forward for the field of cancer immunotherapy, more specially for cancer vaccines, which have had a long but relatively unsuccessful track record until now,” said Jedd Wolchok, a melanoma expert and director of the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, in an email. It shows that training the immune system to recognize specific cancer targets can enhance the benefits of existing immune drugs, he said.

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Details on how much the shot improved recurrence-free survival — the amount of time a patient lives without their cancer coming back — weren’t released. The trial remains ongoing to assess whether patients who get the vaccine live longer.

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Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. In the United States, roughly 112,000 people are diagnosed with it each year and about 8,500 people die from it, according to the American Cancer Society.

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The companies will discuss filing for approval with regulators and will present the data at an upcoming medical meeting, according to the statement. In an interview, Moderna chief executive Stéphane Bancel said the product could be approved as soon as 2027, depending on the outcome of the regulatory review.

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“It is an extraordinary milestone for mRNA science,” Bancel said.

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Still, questions remain about the cost and feasibility of producing such bespoke cancer treatments at scale. And the companies will need to prove that the vaccine works in other tumour types beyond melanoma in order to generate truly large sales.

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The worldwide market for drugs to treat operable melanoma cases is about US$2.3 billion a year now, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Max Nisen said in an email.

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“I am not sure this is a blockbuster indication on its own and if it ever gets there, it’ll be barely,” he said, speaking specifically about its use in melanoma. If it works in other tumour types, like lung cancer, sales could be much larger, he said.