Pioneering cancer fighter sees promise beyond melanoma breakthrough

Drugmakers Moderna and Merck have announced that a phase three trial for a personalized cancer vaccine successfully lowered the risk of death and metastases for patients with melanoma. As the Harvard Gazette tells it, the vaccine uses messenger RNA to prime the immune system to attack tumor-specific proteins, a technique pioneered in part by researchers at Harvard-affiliated labs. While these initial results focus on skin cancer, other large-scale studies are currently underway for lung, bladder, and kidney cancers.

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