A cancer vaccine that might work? Moderna posts 'promising' early snapshot for Merck-partnered program and raids Bristol Myers for a new cancer R&D chief - Endpoints News

Re­mem­ber that per­son­al­ized can­cer vac­cine Mod­er­na was de­vel­op­ing?

As the world awaits da­ta from its late-stage Covid-19 can­di­date, the mR­NA play­er is in­ter­rupt­ing its most in­ten­sive­ly watched pro­gram with an up­beat ear­ly snap­shot of da­ta from its mes­sen­ger RNA can­cer vac­cine mR­NA-4157. And the Mod­er­na team is us­ing the oc­ca­sion to in­tro­duce a new chief for their on­col­o­gy unit, raid­ed from Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s can­cer group.

When com­bined with Mer­ck’s Keytru­da in the Phase I KEYNOTE-603 tri­al, re­searchers re­port, the vac­cine ap­pears some­what ef­fec­tive in shrink­ing tu­mors. Among 10 pa­tients with HPV-neg­a­tive head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma, the over­all re­sponse rate is 50%: 2 com­plete re­spons­es and 3 par­tial re­spons­es. And it is trans­lat­ing to con­sid­er­able ben­e­fit over the PD-1 in­hibitor alone:

Me­di­an pro­gres­sion free sur­vival (mPFS) is 9.8 months, which com­pares fa­vor­ably to the pub­lished ORR and mPFS of 14.6% and 2.0 months re­spec­tive­ly, for Keytru­da monother­a­py. In­clud­ing four pa­tients with sta­ble dis­ease, the Dis­ease Con­trol Rate (DCR) is 90% (9/10). Me­di­an du­ra­tion of re­sponse has not been reached.

“The da­ta are pre­lim­i­nary and the sam­ple size is small, but it is promis­ing,” Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona pro­fes­sor Julie Bau­man, who’s pre­sent­ing the in­ter­im da­ta at The So­ci­ety for Im­munother­a­py of Can­cer’s An­nu­al Meet­ing, said in a state­ment. “A phase I tri­al is about safe­ty first and fore­most, and we now know this treat­ment is safe and tol­er­a­ble. But, we al­so have a strong sig­nal to point us to fur­ther study this in head and neck can­cer.”

Jef­feries an­a­lyst Michael Yee ob­served that the re­sults com­pare fa­vor­ably even with the Keytru­da/chemo com­bo, the stan­dard of care in first-line treat­ment, which yields an ORR of 36% and mPFS of 4.9 months.

“While 4/5 re­spon­ders achieved PR af­ter 2 dos­es of Keytru­da pri­or to mR­NA-4157, all 4 re­spons­es deep­ened af­ter mR­NA-4157 ad­min­is­tra­tion w/ 2 PRs con­vert­ing to CRs,” he wrote “Add’l, one pt pro­gressed on Keytru­da, but start­ed to re­spond af­ter mR­NA-4157.”

In the mi­crosatel­lite sta­ble col­orec­tal car­ci­no­ma group, though, no re­spons­es were ob­served out of 17 pa­tients.

With a clean tol­er­a­bil­i­ty so far, Mod­er­na now plans to ex­pand the HN­SCC co­hort to 40 pa­tients. For each one, the com­pa­ny tai­lor makes a vac­cine with mes­sen­ger RNA that en­codes up to 20 neoepi­topes that its al­go­rithms pre­dict would stir up the strongest im­mune re­sponse.

It will be do­ing so un­der the lead­er­ship of Praveen Aa­nur, who’s jump­ing from Bris­tol My­ers Squibb to be­come Mod­er­na’s ther­a­peu­tic area head for on­col­o­gy de­vel­op­ment. Aa­nur spent the last 7 years work­ing on Bris­tol My­ers’ im­muno-on­col­o­gy pipeline. He re­ceived an MBBS from Ban­ga­lore Uni­ver­si­ty, an MPH from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma and an MBA from Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of Busi­ness.

Can­cer vac­cines are gain­ing trac­tion among hefty bio­phar­ma play­ers again as new biotechs spring up fol­low­ing a se­ries of clin­i­cal dis­as­ters among the gen-1 play­ers. Re­gen­eron is al­lied with BioN­Tech — now a house­hold name thanks to its Pfiz­er-part­nered Covid-19 ef­fort — on a Phase II test­ing a 4-anti­gen can­di­date, while Roche re­cent­ly shelled out $200 mil­lion for a neoanti­gen pro­gram.