The success of mRNA-based drugs in combating coronavirus is inspiring scientists to create similar vaccines for melanoma and other tumours
n December 2022, the US biotech firm Moderna, a company that emerged from relative obscurity to become a household name during the pandemic, published theConducted in partnership with the pharma company MSD, it demonstrated that a messenger RNA cancer vaccine, used in combination with immunotherapy, could offer significant benefit to patients with advanced melanoma who had received surgery to remove their tumours.
This is a remarkable development given that not so long ago, BioNTech’s founders – married entrepreneurs Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci – were viewed with suspicion by oncologists as purveyors of a technology that was derided as implausible and impractical. Moderna and MSD now plan to initiate a phase III trial for advanced melanoma in 2023, while BioNTech expects to release results from its own melanoma trial later this year. Between them, Moderna, BioNTech and CureVac – the third main player in the field –Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci.
“The genomics in the tumour cell are chaotic,” says Prof Alan Melcher from the Institute of Cancer Research. “There’s stuff turning into protein that shouldn’t be turning into protein and there are other places where big chunks of DNA just either get dropped out or inserted or turned around. But at the moment, what we’re missing is how you predict the antigens that matter.”
“The tumour genome is full of what are called structural variations,” says Ronald Plasterk, the senior vice-president for science and innovation at CureVac Netherlands. “On average, let’s say in a lung cancer, there’s about 100 to 200 of these structural variations, and they’ve been fully ignored by previous efforts, because you have to sequence the full genome to pull them out.”
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