Health · 2026-10-25 · Morning briefing

Personalised cancer vaccine nears approval after trial success

A personalised mRNA vaccine for melanoma has substantially cut the risk of the cancer returning in a late-stage trial involving over 1,100 adults. After approximately two years, 82% of patients who received the vaccine combined with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab were alive and recurrence-free. This compares with a 70% rate for patients who received only pembrolizumab.

Developed by Moderna and Merck, the vaccine uses mRNA technology to train a patient's immune system to attack their specific cancer. Each dose is custom-made, encoding for proteins with up to 34 mutations unique to an individual's tumour. In the trial, the combination therapy was administered every three weeks for up to one year.

Following the results, the vaccine is expected to gain approval in the US, Europe, and the UK next year. Researchers suggest the approach could also work for lung, bladder, and kidney cancers. However, a previous report estimated a cost of around $200,000 per treatment, a figure the manufacturers have not confirmed.

Summary written by Cup of News with AI from the sources below. Check the originals for the full story.

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• A personalized cancer vaccine could be available as soon as 2027. Here’s what we know
• Moderna mRNA vaccine almost halves the risk of skin cancer returning
• Merck and Moderna have ‘lot of exploring to do’ after initial cancer vaccine success
• Merck and Moderna release promising data on cancer vaccine trial
• Cancer Vaccine Cuts the Risk of Melanoma Recurrence, Drug Makers Report

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