<\/p>\n
Mechanistically, it\u2019s similar to the covid-19 vaccines. What\u2019s different, of course, is that the patient is being immunized against a cancer, not a virus.<\/p>\n
And it looks like a possible breakthrough. This year, Moderna and Merck showed that such shots halved the chance that patients with the deadliest form of skin cancer would die from a recurrence after surgery.<\/p>\n
In its formal communications, like regulatory filings, Moderna hasn\u2019t called the shot a cancer vaccine since 2023. That\u2019s when it partnered up with Merck and rebranded the tech as individualized neoantigen therapy, or INT. Moderna\u2019s CEO said at the time that the renaming was to \u201cbetter describe the goal of the program.\u201d (BioNTech, the European vaccine maker that\u2019s also working in cancer, has shifted its language too, moving from \u201cneoantigen vaccine\u201d in 2021 to \u201cmRNA cancer immunotherapies\u201d in its latest report.)<\/p>\n
The logic of casting it as a therapy is that patients already have cancer\u2014so it\u2019s a treatment as opposed to a preventive measure. But it\u2019s no secret what the other goal is: to distance important innovation from vaccine fearmongering, which has been inflamed by high-ranking US officials. \u201cVaccines are maybe a dirty word nowadays, but we still believe in the science and harnessing our immune system to not only fight infections, but hopefully to also fight \u2026 cancers,\u201d Kyle Holen, head of Moderna\u2019s cancer program, said last summer during BIO 2025, a big biotech event in Boston.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is happy with the word games. Take Ryan Sullivan, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital who has enrolled patients in Moderna\u2019s trials. He says the change raises questions over whether trial volunteers are being properly informed. \u201cThere is some concern that there will be patients who decline to treat their cancer because it is a vaccine,\u201d Sullivan told me. \u201cBut I also felt it was important, as many of my colleagues did, that you have to call it what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
#Whats #Modernas #vaccine #therapy #dilemma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mechanistically, it\u2019s similar to the covid-19 vaccines. What\u2019s different, of course, is that the patient…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2307,5988,1278,5989,1536],"class_list":["post-6300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-dilemma","tag-modernas","tag-therapy","tag-vaccine","tag-whats"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/syringe-therapy1-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}