Merck, Moderna Break Ground with Personalized Melanoma Vaccine

A personalized mRNA vaccine developed by Merck & Co., Inc. and Moderna, Inc. has shown positive Phase 3 results in patients with high-risk melanoma.

The companies announced that their individualized neoantigen therapy, intismeran autogene, combined with Merck's immunotherapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), achieved statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in recurrence-free survival (RFS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) compared with KEYTRUDA alone.

The study enrolled 1,137 patients, who were randomly assigned to receive intismeran autogene plus KEYTRUDA or KEYTRUDA alone over approximately one year.