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Medicine

Moderna Says mRNA Cancer Vaccine Reduces Melanoma's Return By 44% (nbcnews.com) 88

Posted by BeauHD from the statistically-significant dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The company said a possible melanoma vaccine it is studying with pharmaceutical giant Merck fared well in a small study of patients who had the cancer surgically removed. The drugmakers said a combination of the vaccine and Merck's immunotherapy Keytruda led to a statistically significant improvement in survival before the cancer returned in patients with advanced melanoma. [...] Like Spikevax (the vaccine used to help protect against COVID-19), the potential skin cancer vaccine uses mRNA technology. It trains a patient's immune system to recognize and respond specifically to mutations in the DNA of the patient's tumor.

In a mid-stage clinical trial involving 157 patients, researchers compared the vaccine-Keytruda combination with Keytruda alone. Keytruda, Merck's top seller, primes the body's immune system to detect and fight tumor cells. Regulators have approved it to treat several types of cancer. The patient group that took the potential vaccine and Keytruda saw a 44% reduction in the risk of death or the cancer returning, the companies said. The treatments continued for about a year in both groups unless the disease came back or side effects became too severe. Merck and Moderna expect to start a phase 3 study next year, and the companies say they intend to expand their approach to other tumor types.
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Moderna Says mRNA Cancer Vaccine Reduces Melanoma's Return By 44% More

Moderna Says mRNA Cancer Vaccine Reduces Melanoma's Return By 44%

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  • I would rather have that than melanoma. There is a whole host of ailments that this will solve.

  • A reduction of 44% is barely significant. Still, it's good enough to move to phase three trials.

    • Re:44% (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @05:47AM (#63129490)

      A reduction of 44% is barely significant. Still, it's good enough to move to phase three trials.

      Its more than significant, it 44%. Almost 50/50. Thats a spectacular improvement in odds for a cancer that usually does you in if you dont get it early.

      Heres the thing. Melanoma is an emergency. And the more treatments you throw at it, the more they accumulate the odds of survival. No particular intervention is the silver bullet for this sort of thing. Its usually a combination of surgery, radio, chemo , immunotherapy, and now this. You throw ALL of those in however, and this starts looking like a survivable cancer, assuming of course you get to it in time.

      Sometimes though you find it and its already stage IV, at which case, your goose is cooked.

      • Yeah, my dad has it, quote advanced now, from a lifetime of working outside all the time with no sunblock. He always though it would be the cigarettes! If only this had been around 10 years ago...

        • sunblock > vaccine
          ---
          While UV-C poses the biggest danger, UV-A and UV-B rays are not harmless. UV-B and UV-A rays are two forms of high-energy radiation that ionize (i.e., remove electrons from) molecules in a photochemical reaction that generates new molecular products. UV-B and UV-A rays can penetrate the epidermis and dermis layers of our skin, respectively, and have been categorized as “Class I carcinogens” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). (6) Importantly, while

      • Its more than significant, it 44%. Almost 50/50.

        Yeah, but the sample size is small and you don't know the error margins.

        • That effect size is so large that the sample would have to be awfully small for it to be not statistically significant.

          By the way I wish people would say "statistically significant" when using that meaning of the word because it's not the same as "significant" in normal usage. A reduction in risk of 0.01% could be "statistically significant' with a massive sample size, but that doesn't mean it's significant in the normal sense.

      • Bayes cautions: 44% of what? If the odds of recurrence are normally one in a million, 44% is in the right direction, but not so significant. However, if the odds are normally one in four, then a 44% improvement is absolutely stellar! It matters. That's what they mean by whether or not a result is considered statistically significant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

        I'm a little disappointed that it's a "personalized medicine" thing, implying that a precondition is having melanoma that was biopsy'd to train the vaccine on. It also sounds expensive to do the training. This is largely good news, no doubt, but I was hoping for a generic innoculation that is primed to fight melanoma if/when it emerged. ONeill is right about early detection (and the penalties of failure), so you still need to catch it to make a vaccine.

        TFA is a little spare on detail, so I'm reading into wh

    • A reduction of 44% is barely significant. Still, it's good enough to move to phase three trials.

      A reduction of 44% is not only highly significant, but it's in a cohort who already had advanced melanoma and were trying to prevent it returning.

      • Is it? What's the natural variance? Did they correctly control for the other medicines the patients were taking? What were the error bars?

        • Is it? What's the natural variance? Did they correctly control for the other medicines the patients were taking? What were the error bars?

          This report is of a trial in progress, so we will have to wait for the paper summarizing results. But of course, if the trial is successful you will just disbelieve it anyway.

          • Phase 2 trials are done. They are moving on to phase 3 trials.

            If you don't understand margin of error, you should be looking into a statistics class, not posting on Slashdot.

  • Hmmm. Darwin award? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @05:27AM (#63129478) Journal
    I wonder how many Darwin awards will be done with all of the misinformation by trumpers concerning mRNA vaccines/treatments?
    I suspect that a number of Trumper/fascists will refuse to take any of these vax/treatments. As such, their death rate compared to the normal population will jump way up, thereby solving the issue of far right extremists trying to destroy Democracy. Now, we just have to get the goon squad and their followers to do the same, and America will be back to normal.

    • While amoung cancers this one might be a relatively frequent one, bottom line the death rate is far to low to have any impact.

    • Not much, since Darwin awards are only for those who haven't reproduced yet.

      Luckily for us, politics isn't genetic, so Darwin awards aren't going to swing things either way.

      • Not much, since Darwin awards are only for those who haven't reproduced yet.

        Perhaps some Fox News host can get them to tan their balls before they reproduce.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 )

        The correct award for this would be a Herman Cain award.

    • This approach to treating cancer has been on a lot of wish lists for a long time. If it winds up working, I have to believe it might wind up being adapted to other cancers as well.

      That's the point where it would be nice to put all the anti-vaxxers at the end of the line for treatment...and tell them they can't have it at all until they and their families can prove they've had all the required vaccines that have helped us get polio, chicken pox, measles, whooping cough and some other nasty diseases under co

    • I wonder how many Darwin awards will be done with all of the misinformation by trumpers concerning mRNA vaccines/treatments?

      OK, I'll bite, and I'm no trumper....
      If my option is _certain death_ and an mRNA vaccine/treatment, I'll look closely at this treatment. If my option is "far less than 1% chance of death" I won't look so closely. This isn't Darwin at work, this is critical thinking.

      • Sure you wouldn't take an mRNA vaccine before eating a ham sandwich, since they're at about equal risk to your health. But most anything worth engaging a medical professional about is higher risk.

      • If my option is _certain death_ and an mRNA vaccine/treatment, I'll look closely at this treatment.

        First off, it is not certain death. Just very likely. :)

        If my option is "far less than 1% chance of death" I won't look so closely. This isn't Darwin at work, this is critical thinking.

        First, prior to the vax, the chance of death was higher. MUCH higher if you were admitted to the hospital. And because this was spreading all over and nearly all hospitals were taking all covid patients, it meant that anybody that was in the hospital stood a good chance of catching it. If those ppl were immunocompromised (many were), they were as good as dead.
        Secondly, It was because of the vax, combined with knowledge of treatments, that the chances

        • If my option is _certain death_ and an mRNA vaccine/treatment, I'll look closely at this treatment.

          First off, it is not certain death. Just very likely. :)

          Fair enough, noting there is a range between certainty and zero. ;-)

          If my option is "far less than 1% chance of death" I won't look so closely. This isn't Darwin at work, this is critical thinking.

          First, prior to the vax, the chance of death was higher. MUCH higher if you were admitted to the hospital. And because this was spreading all over and nearly all hospitals were taking all covid patients, it meant that anybody that was in the hospital stood a good chance of catching it. If those ppl were immunocompromised (many were), they were as good as dead.

          Secondly, It was because of the vax, combined with knowledge of treatments, that the chances of death went way down. That 1% chance of death is NOW, not pre-vax. And note that the 1% chance of death is NOT if somebody catches it. It is 1% of our population. So, there is a critical thinking that is needed and that is examining REAL stats, not made up ones.

          This particular article is probably your best one to really understand that '1%'. It shows that unvaxed die at 10x the rate of vaxed.

          But what you did not consider was long covid. Turns out that nearly all of the long covid patients are unvaxed. But the worst part of that, is that the simple majority are under age 20. IOW, kids that will for the rest of their lives suffer, because their parents decided that vaccination was bad.

          Now, the far right wants to stop the military from forcing GIs from getting the vax. It will make it easy for enemies to attack when an entire ship is sick, or an FOB will be attacked and wiped out because a number of GIs decided that it was not needed and the far righties decided that Gov should not require it of all G.I. even though covid is far far more likely than is small pox.

          No, the same fools that will not take this vaccination will no doubt believe that BS about the cancer vax and not take it.

          And sadly, I can see the far left or foreign nations, putting out false information just to get the idiots to not take it. Just like they are doing on mRNA vaccines.

          As someone who is vaccinated, but still got covid twice, I question all of it. I know how to read the stats (the benefits of both parents being high school teachers, never gave me an answer but instead taught me how to learn). As you mention... early on the rate were scary because we didn't know what this thing was nor how to treat it. And this far in, we learn things like the vaccination wasn't tested to prevent spread (from the CEO of Pfi

          • Ok, I am going to teach you a bit more about vaccines and how they work and WHY you want these. This is from another postings:

            That is not how a vax works. It stimulates your immune system against a particular antigen (protein, carbo, etc), nothing more.
            Think of a military base that has a billion different enemies out there. Each soldier is trained to spot and take out 1 to a dozen types of enemies. No more. Now, imagine a base with less than a dozen soldiers that recognize an enemy that is going to attack. Once it (enemy) attacks, then other soldiers will be trained (actually created) to attack the enemy.
            Assume you start with a dozen soldiers. It will take a short time to deal with only 12 enemies.
            Now what happens if a 100 invade? A dozen soldiers will hold off 100 while new ones are create. That is typical of a bacterial infection.
            Most airborne diseases tend on the order of 1000s to infect.
            Covid started at 10K and the recent stuff is well over 100K viral particles in each breath that you take ( sars-cov2 mutates fast).
            So, it will quickly overwhelm your 12 soldiers. BUT, if you have say 10,000 soldiers trained against them, it will not stop it, but it will be able to QUICKLY mount a defense & repeal them in short time.
            That is what a vax does. It can not and does not stop infection. Nor does it stop spreading from happening.
            BUT, it does allow your system to mount a defense quickly and stop spreading large amounts for long periods of time.

            This is why when I was a kid (before you time), we got LIVE SMALLPOX virus injected into us. These were attenuated, but, it stopped smallpox from spreading. Note that it actually killed a few ppl each year, but these were ppl that if they were infected by a regular smallpox, would have died VERY QUICKLY (they had no immunity to it).

            Now, you claim that you got covid twice. False.

            • >> Hopefully, this helped you to understand WHY the vaccine actually worked and is not a dud.

              Never said its was a dud. Why "teach" me something I did not inquire nor falsely state?

              >> Now, you claim that you got covid twice. False.

              Remind me where you practice medicine?

    • One of the advantages of mRNA vaccine technology is the cost and flexibility, those that forgo treatments based on it will find fewer and fewer treatments for their ailments available as, say, we stop growing vaccines in eggs and making antibodies in goats.

    • I wonder how many Darwin awards will be done with all of the misinformation by trumpers concerning mRNA vaccines/treatments?

      I suspect that a number of Trumper/fascists will refuse to take any of these vax/treatments. As such, their death rate compared to the normal population will jump way up, thereby solving the issue of far right extremists trying to destroy Democracy. Now, we just have to get the goon squad and their followers to do the same, and America will be back to normal.

      Why can't we compromise and find some common ground?

      All we need is more truthful and transparent disclosures, "Had something to do with stem cells", "The gays were involved in the development, testing, distribution of this medicine", "LIBERAL monies was used to develop this drug", "Something the Jews", "Profits from the sale of this vaccine go to the company that makes it", etc.

      That's all we need, and a little patience.

    • No, sorry - apples to oranges comparison.

      Many/most cancers are or become terminal. That's a far cry from Covid-19 and its less than .2% mortality rate. mRNA treatments have many undesirable side effects possible in otherwise healthy people that are acceptable risks with cancer patients. Healthy folks should not have to be forced to take the jab that ended up doing NOTHING to stop covid from contracting or spreading it.

      Wake up people, you've been and continue to be lied to.

      • They are being lied to, but the lies are yours and the far right.
        For starters, .2% mortaility rate? Uh no. That is across the GENERAL POPULATION. IOW, the unvaxed AND VAXED. The unvaxed death rate is ~10x what the vaxed is.
        Secondly, the mRNA vax DOES stop it from spreading, AND more importantly, makes it so that nearly all ppl will survive it.
        Third,

        mRNA treatments have many undesirable side effects possible in otherwise healthy people that are acceptable risks with cancer patients.

        That is also another lie by you. mRNA vax caused no deaths (not a single autopsy pointed to immuno caused deaths, though I have to wonder if 1 or 2 of the de

  • Like the other major item of science news this week, the first over-unity fusion test at Lawrence Livermore, this article has attracted mostly trolls rather than the hosannas such news used to elicit. Where did the nerds all go?

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