Moderna stock surged more than 120 percent Wednesday morning, nearly doubling in a single session, after Moderna and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine called intismeran, combined with Merck's blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda, succeeded in its first-ever Phase 3 randomized clinical trial in melanoma patients.
Merck rose more than 10 percent. Both stocks moved on news the trial was stopped early because the results were so strong.
The trial, called INTerpath-001, enrolled 1,137 patients with Stage IIB-IV melanoma whose detectable cancer had been surgically removed.
Patients who received intismeran plus Keytruda went significantly longer without their melanoma returning and had a significantly lower risk of the cancer spreading to other parts of their body compared to patients who received Keytruda alone.
Those are the two primary goals the trial was designed to hit. It hit both.
This is the first time a personalized neoantigen cancer vaccine, one created specifically for each patient's individual tumor, has ever succeeded in a large randomized late-stage trial.
"What might have been considered science fiction 15 or 20 years ago, that we can produce a personalized vaccine based on sequencing from a tumor, could be used to delay progression of melanoma," said Dr. Jedd Wolchok of Weill Cornell Medicine. Jefferies analysts said the vaccine could reach the market as early as 2027.