Moderna, Merck Show 49% Melanoma Recurrence Risk Cut at 5 Years With V940 Plus KEYTRUDA
Updated
Updated · Barre Montpelier Times Argus · Jun 1
Moderna, Merck Show 49% Melanoma Recurrence Risk Cut at 5 Years With V940 Plus KEYTRUDA
4 articles · Updated · Barre Montpelier Times Argus · Jun 1
Five-year follow-up from the 157-patient Phase 2b KEYNOTE-942 trial showed intismeran autogene plus KEYTRUDA cut recurrence or death risk by 49% versus KEYTRUDA alone and reduced distant metastasis or death risk by 59%.
At a median 60.3 months of follow-up, the combination also showed an exploratory overall-survival trend with a hazard ratio of 0.471, while safety remained consistent with earlier analyses and no Grade 4-5 events were attributed to intismeran autogene.
Common treatment-related side effects in the combination arm were fatigue and injection-site pain, both at 59.6%, and chills at 51.0%; immune-related adverse events were similar to KEYTRUDA alone at 45.2% versus 44.0%.
The updated data, presented at ASCO and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, also linked the regimen to roughly 2-fold higher novel expanded T-cell clonotypes, supporting the therapy's proposed neoantigen-driven mechanism.
Moderna and Merck now have 9 Phase 2 and 3 trials underway for the personalized mRNA therapy with KEYTRUDA across melanoma, lung, bladder and kidney cancers, including fully enrolled melanoma and renal studies.
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