A vaccine made from your own tumour cut melanoma's return risk by 42%

For people who have had high-risk melanoma cut out, the hardest part is often the waiting — wondering if it will come back. In a phase 3 trial of 1,137 patients, adding a personalised vaccine called intismeran to standard immunotherapy cut the risk of the cancer returning or of death by 42% compared with immunotherapy alone. The vaccine is built from each patient's own tumour: scientists read its unique abnormal proteins, up to 34 of them, and teach the immune system to hunt any cancer cells that match. Two years on, 82.2% of vaccine patients were still free of recurrence, against 70.0% on immunotherapy alone, and side effects from the vaccine were mostly brief — a sore arm, headache or chills. Professor Georgina Long called it the coming together of technology, biology and the courage to take the idea into the clinic.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation