00:00Now to a potential breakthrough in the fight against skin cancer. Merck and Moderna said
00:04their personalized cancer vaccines helped cut the reoccurrence of melanoma in a large late-stage
00:10trial. Bloomberg's Madison Muller covers the sector and joins us. I don't know where to start,
00:15Madison, whether it's the breakthrough or just the huge move. And Moderna shares this morning,
00:20this is a really big reaction to the study. Totally. I mean, we're winning sort of on
00:24multiple fronts here, and I think that that's the takeaway. I mean, this is at the risk of
00:28sounding like a total nerd. A really big and important moment in science, this is something
00:33that scientists have been chasing for almost a century, is a personalized cancer treatment,
00:38personalized cancer vaccine. And so we're seeing an mRNA cancer vaccine really succeed in the first
00:44large late-stage trial, like you said. So a win for cancer, a win for the companies. For Moderna,
00:49which is still trying to find its footing really after the pandemic, we're seeing investors look
00:54at this and say, okay, maybe this company really does have a future beyond COVID and potentially
01:00another really steady and big source of revenue if this vaccine does come to market as the companies
01:05expect next year. Obviously, that's still pending regulatory approval. But it's a pretty big moment,
01:11both in science and for these companies.
01:14Right. And as you and the team have been reporting, melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer.
01:18So this would be huge. But are you also suggesting that a win here isn't just a win against skin
01:23cancer, that it proves something about mRNA vaccines, that they could be applied to cancers
01:29more broadly? Exactly. So that's what the companies still really need to figure out. They're testing
01:33these vaccines in other types of cancer right now. And so we'll see if those results translate into
01:38other forms of tumors. But that's the hope, is that these, you know, mRNA is an incredibly flexible
01:44technology. That's why it works so well for COVID. You know, you can plug in these different mutations
01:49and sort of adapt the vaccine to the different COVID mutations. Similar theory sort of strategy
01:54for cancer, which these tumors also have mutations. And what these scientists do is they take a biopsy
02:00of the people's tumors, and then they can customize these vaccines to match the mutations that are most
02:05likely to have an immune response. And it takes just six weeks, which is also pretty crazy.
02:09I don't know if there's a good answer to this. But also when I saw this news, I thought,
02:12how many people won't take this shot? Just because of the huge anti-vax movement that's
02:17happening right now, that people would avoid something that could potentially stop cancer
02:20from coming back because it comes in the form of this vaccine.
02:23That's 100% right. And it's something that is really going to be a consideration. And
02:27there is so much misinformation out there right now about mRNA. There's a lot of fear around these
02:32shots still. But when it comes to something like cancer that is potentially so deadly,
02:37you know, people will have to hopefully talk to their doctors and make that risk-benefit analysis
02:41for themselves. But, you know, it's an important consideration that there's so much hesitancy
02:46and fear around vaccines right now.
02:47Even so, just such an exciting story.
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