00:00Did you see the news about a supposed new cancer vaccine?
00:04We are facing a technology that will forever change the history of health.
00:09The announcement by two of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies
00:13It has a lot of potential and has generated expectations and a lot of optimism.
00:17But data is still lacking, and at best,
00:21We are looking at a very promising technology
00:24which is only just beginning to show how far it can go.
00:28Here we explain the key points of this ad.
00:31Merck and Moderna announced the first data from a phase 3 study
00:36of a personalized melanoma therapy,
00:39the most aggressive type of skin cancer.
00:41This therapy is actually a combination of two things.
00:45First, Pembrolizumab, the active ingredient in Keytruda,
00:50one of the most widely used immunotherapies for treating different types of cancer in the world
00:55which, for example, has been used in Colombia for many years.
00:58Secondly, and here's the new part, it's an experimental treatment
01:02known as V940 or MRNA4157.
01:09What the pharmaceutical companies did was compare the results
01:13which had 1,137 patients who were divided into two groups.
01:18The first group received only Pembrolizumab and the second group received Pembrolizumab
01:23plus the new experimental treatment.
01:26What were the results?
01:27The first thing to say is that the study is not yet known.
01:31What we know can be found in a press release published by both pharmaceutical companies.
01:36That said, in general terms, the combination achieved better results than Pembrolizumab alone.
01:42And what kind of results?
01:44Basically in two indicators.
01:46The patients who received that combination were people who had suffered from cancer.
01:51and those who had already had the melanoma surgically removed,
01:55They remained for a longer time without the disease returning.
01:58and without any distant metastasis appearing.
02:02That is, when cancer cells separate from the original tumor
02:06and form new tumors in other organs.
02:08With that clear, why all the global fuss?
02:11The key lies in that new experimental therapy.
02:15And here the issue is going to get a little more complex.
02:18Parables.
02:19This is a therapy based on messenger RNA technology.
02:24The same one that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible.
02:27To avoid getting into very technical things,
02:29Scientists describe it as giving the immune system
02:33a portrait or a trace of the tumor in front of him
02:36so that he can identify and attack him, he reappears.
02:39In practical terms, neoantigens act as a molecular fingerprint of the tumor.
02:44Since they are not normally present in the body,
02:47the immune system can recognize them as foreign
02:50and generate T lymphocytes, capable of attacking the cells that express them.
02:54All of this, if confirmed, would be a true historical milestone.
02:59Eventually, this line of treatment could profoundly alter
03:03the entire chain of alcohol care.
03:06The biopsy would no longer serve solely to answer
03:09What type of cancer does this patient have?
03:11and could also become the raw material for responding
03:15What treatments can we manufacture specifically for this patient?
03:19Firstly, because this is pure personalized medicine.
03:24Individualized neoantigen therapy takes this concept a step further.
03:29Here we are not only looking for a therapeutic target known and shared by many patients,
03:35instead we analyze the particular mutations of a person's tumor
03:38to identify neoantigens, which may be unique to that cancer
03:42and use them to design a treatment specifically for that patient.
03:46There is no single formula for this treatment that can be applied in the same way to all patients.
03:53The technology works patient by patient, taking into account the characteristics of each tumor.
03:59That already raises a huge question.
04:01How easy, fast, and cheap is this for each patient?
04:05It is possible that one day this will be available on a massive scale.
04:09To turn this technology into everyday medicine, we will have to demonstrate not only that it works,
04:15but we can produce thousands of individualized treatments quickly, reproducibly, and economically sustainably.
04:22Furthermore, there is another very important point.
04:26A positive result in melanoma does not mean that the same strategy will work for all types of cancer.
04:33So the challenge now is to see if this technology can demonstrate similar results in other patients and in other
04:41types of cancer.
04:42Even with all these questions and the data that is still missing, one thing does seem clear.
04:48Messenger RNA is proving that it can be much more than a tool against viruses.
04:54And if this technology manages to demonstrate its full potential against cancer, we could be witnessing the beginning of a new era.
05:01stage of personalized medicine.
05:04If you want to learn more about this topic and many others, visit the Spectator's Health section and follow us on
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05:24Thank you.
05:26Thank you.
