Should we already be pleased with the positive preliminary results from Moderna and Merck for their skin cancer vaccine? US laboratories announced encouraging results Tuesday for this mRNA vaccine in development, when taken with the cancer treatment Keytruda.
In a trial of more than 150 people with melanoma, taking the vaccine along with the drug Keytruda reduced the risk of the cancer coming back or dying by 44%, compared with people treated with the drug Keytruda alone, the anti-melanoma drug. cancer, according to results announced Tuesday. These have not yet been the subject of a scientific publication and therefore have not been peer reviewed.
A vaccine “not for tomorrow”
“Obviously, that 44% is interesting, but you also have to look at the risk-benefit, with the risk of side effects,” Marie-Dominique Galibert, a member of the League Against Cancer’s national scientific council, explains to BFMTV.com. Cancer and genetic researcher specializing in messenger RNA and melanoma.
“For me, who is a scientist, these are advances of interest. But the vaccine is not for tomorrow ”, she underlines:“ we can be excited but we are not there yet ”.
The laboratories want to launch phase 3 trials in 2023, that is, in a greater number of patients. Therefore, the commercialization of the product, if the tests are successful, should not happen for a few years.
cancer messenger RNA
Moderna had already made a sensational entry into the pharmaceutical market by being one of the first, with Pfizer-BioNTech, to offer a vaccine against Covid-19 using messenger RNA. While a vaccine is traditionally based on the administration of an attenuated or inactivated infectious agent, this technology creates a “copy” of the genome of the target virus: “the idea is to let our own cells manufacture the component against which our body will learn to defend themselves”, explains the public institute for medical research Inserm on its website.
“In the context of cancers, cancer cells generate mutations at the genome level, which produces marks, which the immune system will recognize as ‘non-self’, such as the viral particles of viruses”, develops Marie-Dominique. Galiberto.
These proteins, recognized as foreign, are the targets of the messenger RNA, thanks to which “the immune system will activate”, according to Professor Galibert.
“But we are in a balance where many times, in oncology, the immune system can slow down. Hence the idea of associating Keytruda”, he points out.
Indeed, Keytruda is an immunotherapy treatment, a treatment that serves to stimulate the body’s immune defenses against cancer cells.
Outlook for other types of cancer
For Professor Galibert, if the results from Merck and Moderna are conclusive, “this will pave the way for first-line therapeutic vaccination.”
This vaccine would then be the first treatment against melanoma, where currently surgery is generally prioritized. For this US laboratory trial, patients had undergone an operation to remove the tumor before receiving treatment: nine doses of the vaccine. Adapted, it could also be used against other cancers, such as lung cancer, believes Marie-Dominique Galibert.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in men and the second in women in France, behind cardiovascular diseases, according to Public Health France. Melanoma of the skin is the “cancer in which the number of new cases per year (incidence) increases the most,” says the National Cancer Institute on its site, with an incidence that has risen 4% in men and 2, 7% in women in the last 30 years. years.
Source: BFM TV
