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The story
Moderna and Merck announced on the 19th that their jointly developed mRNA cancer vaccine met its primary goal of suppressing cancer recurrence and metastasis in a late-stage (Phase 3) clinical trial targeting malignant melanoma, sending Moderna’s stock soaring 177% in a single day.
While the thread buzzed with excitement over this new cancer treatment technology, some voiced skepticism — pointing to the sky-high price tag inherent to a personalized treatment (with guesses around ¥9.99 million, roughly $67,000) and the fact that the demonstrated benefit was limited to “extending time to recurrence.”
Moderna and Merck’s Skin Cancer Vaccine Succeeds in Late-Stage Trial… Stock Jumps 177% in a Day
U.S. pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck revealed on the 19th that their jointly developed messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer vaccine achieved its primary goal of suppressing cancer recurrence and metastasis in a late-stage (Phase 3) clinical trial involving patients with malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
This marks the first time a personalized cancer treatment built on the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines has produced positive results in a large-scale Phase 3 clinical trial.
Source: s.japanese.joins.com / Original article here
What people said
Ha, this is exactly the kind of news that'll send the anti-vaxxers into another meltdown lol
It's a straight line running from the PD-1 antibody breakthroughs all the way to this.
It's not a treatment everyone overseas will have access to, and in Japan it'll just become another high-cost medical care headache.
It won't cost that much — more like around ¥9.99 million (roughly $67,000).
Don't live a lifestyle that promotes abnormal cell growth
Avoid synthetic detergents, fragrances, etc. as much as possible
Use good-quality oil and salt, and make sure you have an easy way to get a variety of polyphenols
Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables lets your gut bacteria — whose collective genes outnumber your own 100 to 1 — pump out the metabolites that keep your immune cells running at 100%
That's just efficient — it helps with everything, not only cancer, so it's the best value you can get
Wouldn't it end up being like ¥20 per base with next-day delivery?
50% of Japanese people get cancer, and cancer is far more dangerous than COVID.
The "vaccine believers" (a mocking term for staunch vaccine boosters) who trust mRNA vaccines as safe and effective should absolutely get this one.
If they don't, they're admitting they were just fools who got played.
Background and Key Points
Moderna and BioNTech’s mRNA platform grabbed global attention through COVID-19 vaccines, but the underlying technology has been in development for cancer immunotherapy since long before 2020. This particular vaccine (mRNA-4157/V940) is paired with Merck’s PD-1 inhibitor Keytruda and is “personalized” — each dose is manufactured from a sequencing of the patient’s own tumor mutations, making it fundamentally different from an off-the-shelf shot. In Japan, any such therapy would fall under the kōgaku iryō (high-cost medical care) system, where the government caps out-of-pocket spending and insurers absorb the rest — which is precisely why posters worried aloud about it becoming a fiscal burden rather than an individual affordability problem, since Japan’s National Health Insurance covers nearly all citizens.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t optimism versus skepticism about mRNA science — nearly everyone accepted the technology works — but a split over what the trial result actually proves. Some read “suppressed recurrence and metastasis” as a near-cure, while others correctly flagged that the trial endpoint was recurrence-free survival, meaning the vaccine delays relapse rather than demonstrating a cure or an overall survival benefit, which is a much higher bar that takes years longer to confirm.
What the thread never addressed is that this melanoma trial builds directly on a Phase 2b study (KEYNOTE-942) that already showed roughly a 44% reduction in risk of recurrence or death when the vaccine was combined with Keytruda versus Keytruda alone — this Phase 3 readout is a confirmatory step, not a first-of-its-kind result, and melanoma was chosen as the proving ground partly because it has an unusually high mutation burden, making it easier for a personalized vaccine to find distinct neoantigens to target. That nuance about why melanoma specifically was picked went unmentioned.
*This article was compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread [Vaccine] Moderna and Merck’s Skin Cancer Vaccine Succeeds in Late-Stage Trial… Stock Jumps 177% in a Day.
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