Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Shares in US vaccine-maker Moderna rose by as much as 156 per cent after the company reported successful trial results for an experimental skin cancer vaccine.
Moderna on Wednesday said the therapy, jointly developed with Merck, delivered the first positive outcome in a late-stage trial for a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine.
The experimental therapy would be unprecedented in cancer treatment, with a vaccine custom made for each patient depending on their specific tumours.
“Today’s results represent a landmark moment for adjuvant melanoma treatment,” said Professor Georgina Long, the study’s principal investigator and medical director of Melanoma Institute Australia.
The results of the trial boosted Moderna’s share price by as much as 156 per cent in early trading in New York, taking its market capitalisation to $55bn.
The Massachusetts-based company has been a leader in messenger RNA technology (mRNA), which teaches the body’s immune system to identify and attack illnesses such as Covid-19.
The company is hoping to develop the experimental vaccine technology to treat different types and stages of cancer, and hailed the results as an important milestone towards vaccinating patients with the disease.
Its mRNA cancer shot would be given to a patient who has already been diagnosed with melanoma and designed specifically to attack their tumour.
“We have started to demonstrate the potential of an entirely new class of medicine — and an entirely new way of thinking about cancer care: using the information encoded within an individual patient’s cancer to design a specific therapy that helps train their immune system to fight it,” Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
The companies said the treatment was the “first and only” combined therapy that showed “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” in stopping cancer from redeveloping and spreading in patients whose melanomas had been removed. The regime involved Moderna’s mRNA vaccine and Merck’s medication, Keytruda.
Moderna became a corporate hero during the pandemic as it rushed to develop a vaccine against Covid-19. But its fortunes have since turned as it faces weaker demand for the coronavirus jab. Last year it became the most shorted stock in the S&P 500.
The group has bet on new cancer vaccines to drive a turnaround and has been working for years on the vaccine alongside Merck. Even with Wednesday’s sharp share price rise, Moderna would still be trading at less than a third of its 2021 peak after it launched its Covid vaccine.
Shares in fellow US drugmaker Merck rose nearly 10 per cent in early trading to hit an all-time high.
