Shares in Moderna were ticking upwards today after Merck & Co took up an option on a personalised RNA-based cancer vaccine with a payment of $250 million.
Adding Nykode Therapeutics' VB10.16 vaccine to treatment with Roche's cancer immunotherapy Tecentriq resulted in disease control in two-thirds of patients with advanced cervical cancer.
A peptide vaccine developed by Australia's Imugene has reduced tumour size in around half of patients with HER2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer in a phase 2 trial
It would be easy to forget that back in 2019, BioNTech was an early-stage biotech firmly focused on cancer vaccines, before being catapulted onto the world-stage with its COVID-19 shot.
Belgian immunotherapy firm eTheRNA has received a €6.9 million grant from the European Commission to accelerate clinical development of mRNA therapies for hard-to-treat cancers.