Moderna’s vaccine against cancer is another ’penicillin moment’

A cancer vaccine that uses mRNA technology employed in Covid vaccines is being hailed the “next penicillin moment”.

A new personalised vaccine against melanoma has almost halved the rate of recurrence and death in a major turning point described as cancer’s “penicillin moment”.

When used in combination with immunotherapy treatment Keytruda, the vaccine produced a 44 per cent reduction in the rate at which the skin cancer returned or patients died.

The results from the early stage clinical trial, which included 79 Australian patients, need to be confirmed in a stage three trial involving 1000 patients (not all in Australia) that is due to start next year, but scientists are excited.

“This may represent the next penicillin moment in cancer medicine,” said Melanoma Institute and Sydney University’s Professor Georgina Long, who was involved in the trials.

“For patients with very high risk of it coming back, this is massive. You’re taking it (the risk of cancer returning) down from seven in 10, to four in 10 (with Keytruda alone), down to two in 10. That’s huge.”

The vaccine is being made by US pharmaceutical company Moderna and uses the same technology as its highly successful mRNA vaccines against Covid.

It could eventually be produced in the company’s new factory being constructed near Melbourne, the president of Moderna Dr Stephen Hodge told News Corp.

The vaccine is personalised to each individual patient. To make it, the company takes a sample of the patient’s tumour, identifies 34 mutations specific to that tumour and builds a vaccine against them in a process that takes six weeks.

Associate Professor Georgina Long is a clinical researcher and medical oncologist at Melanoma Institute Australia. Picture: Cameron Richardson

Every three weeks for a year, the patient receives an infusion of Keytruda and two injections of the vaccine after which their immune system is retrained to seek out the cancer cells and kill them.

“It’s not foolproof, its not 100 per cent.” Professor Long said.

“It’s a lot better than the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) alone. And that’s a lot better than what we used to do only five years ago when we simply monitored patients.”

A research associate works at the Moderna Therapeutics Inc. lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Moderna is testing a personalised treatment that teaches the body how to fight cancer. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Dr Hodge said the vaccine worked in combination with Keytruda to boost the body’s own immune response to the cancer.

“Keytruda sort of adds gasoline to the immune response. It ramps it up by removing the brakes on immune cells that are already there. It doesn’t create new cells. It just helps them accelerate,” he said.

“What the vaccine does is it actually makes more cells that are specifically able to see your cancer and boosts the immune system’s response to the actual tumour.”

Retired dementia support worker Pam Morey took part in the clinical trial after a melanoma that first appeared on her nose five years ago returned three times elsewhere in her body.

She suffered considerable side effects from the vaccine treatment, including a metallic taste.

“Body aches like you wouldn’t believe, I didn’t sleep all night. I came up with a red lump where the injection about the size of a lady’s cupped hand, had a temperature. The first time was wicked. I was vomiting. I nearly gave it up,” she told News Corp.

Now she says she is “over the moon” and “it was totally worth it”.

“I want to live to be 100. I’m really happy that so far I’m cancer free because I lost my dad to a cancer, and I lost my nan to a cancer, so I’ve got it on both sides of the family,” she said.

“That blew me away when they said that they would take a piece of the tumour and send it overseas and they would mix that up into a vaccine just for me. I mean, what a blowout.”

Originally published as Moderna’s vaccine against cancer is another ’penicillin moment’