Personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma cut risk of cancer’s return in late-stage trial

A new personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma is being hailed by some oncologists as a major breakthrough after it reduced the risk of cancer recurrence and death by 42% compared with standard treatment in a late-stage clinical trial.

Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research, said the results are a “game changer.”

“It will be seen as the first step toward using cancer vaccines to their full potential,” said Vonderheide, who was not involved in the trial.

The experimental vaccine, called intismeran, was developed by drugmakers Moderna and Merck. Intismeran is personalized to each patient, using genomic data from the patient’s tumor. The new results will be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Madrid.

The trial included 1,137 Stage 3 melanoma patients. All of the participants had undergone surgery to remove their tumors and were being treated with Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda.

In addition to Keytruda, 757 of the participants also got the personalized vaccine; the remaining 380 got a placebo. Two years later, 82% of the patients who received both the new vaccine and the immunotherapy hadn’t had a recurrence, compared with 70% in the immunotherapy plus placebo group.

I believe this to be the true role for this therapy - a carefully designed method to specifically target a disease or illness. This is distinguished from the awful Covid ‘vaccine’ ‘experiment’ where the serum (spike protein) was dumped into the human body, using a blunderbuss approach, without really understanding what it would do to the immune system. Now we know the spike protein is insidious, remains in the body, and is a damaging toxin. Doctors like Peter McCullough have devised protocols to try and rid the body of this harmful toxin.

“anyone still willing to take mrna anything?”

Of course there are, probably by the millions. There are still many out there that either never heard of the dangers mrna poses or refuse to believe the vax can be harmful.

What’s visible is some still wear the masks. What’s annoying is this stupid social distancing. There can be lines of people waiting for this and that, and many idiots social distance at 8 - 10 feet making a line excessively long.

To have widespread cancer suddenly go away on its own is a notable, rare event. Decades ago it was noticed that such seeming miracles happened relatively more often with melanoma than any other cancer. Believing it might represent patients’ immune systems fighting back, attempts to encourage such started in the 1960s. If some kind of immunotherapy could help the least long shot cancer, apparently melanoma, maybe the lessons learned could be applied to others. Unlike COVID mass ‘vaccination’ of the healthy these experiments were on folks already having potentially fatal cancer, for which standard therapy was poor. So a very different experimental risk-benefit potential. Decades of advanced melanoma immunotherapy research produced NADA, but nothing else worked either so they kept trying new ideas on how to accomplish it. Finally a few worked, with Keytruda being the biggest success. That and its variations is now helping several kinds of cancer. There was also limited success with certain kinds of personalized cancer vaccines finally. Keytruda. Is a big step forward, but it’s not a cure all. So next they try to add extra layers to further boost anti-tumor immune response, again beginning with the tumor, melanoma, history says gives the best chance. Personalizing for each tumor is expensive, especially the old ‘analog’ way. But the cost of reading writing DNA and writing correspond mRNA has gone down a lot, so in principle crafting personalized vaccine becomes similar to 3D printing personalized parts. Cost effective IF it can save lives. The real problem, which the Covid mRNA attempts showed all too well, is we need to learn better just how to deliver mRNA to get the most wanted results with the least side effects. If we can figure that out we probably can cure a lot more cancer. And likely cure many of the rare serious genetic disorders. Those potential gains are huge. Limit the needed incremental research to those with serious cancers or genetic diseases who have little to lose and the research is worth pursuing. Work out the details in them before instituting even narrow trials something like an overhyped common cold virus. Earn trust back first. Humanity will be enriched by it in time, even if big pharma doesn’t fulfill its get rich quick scheme because laws removed the flip side risk of getting sued broke quick. Proceed in rational steps, which minimize risk of huge losses, and the riches will come in good time.

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