Author: Malia Neville
That would be RNA!
Now for any Marvel fan, like myself, that recently went to the theaters to watch the new Spider-Man, you may have noticed the technical conversation between Parker and Banner about short interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA). Now siRNA is not the focus here, but the related structure of messenger RNA (mRNA) is. Moderna and Merck & Co. (US based pharmaceutical companies) announced the success of a new mRNA vaccine for melanoma as part of a joint research partnership. This is the same technology used by Moderna to create the Covid-19 vaccine in 2020. So, let us see how the technology and pharmaceuticals has changed in these past years and how it is being applied in cancer treatments.
In the UK from 2022 to 2024 just under 170,000 deaths were attributed to cancer. It is a disease that, I feel, touches every person’s life in the modern age. This wide reach is why cancer has become a large focus for research departments around the world, from prevention and early detection to treatment and remission management. Cancer Research UK alone has spent £416 million on cancer research according to the organization’s 2025/2026 financial report.
The disease is difficult to treat as the cancer cells are simply mutated versions of the cells already in a patient’s tissue. A healthy person’s body kills cancer cells everyday; when an error in genetic code that could give rise to a cancerous tumour is noticed by the person’s immune system and promptly attacked. The immune system, however, is fallible therefore cells can slip the immune system’s notice leading to tumor growths.
A second difficult aspect of cancer treatment is the ability for recurrence of tumors along with their ability for tumors to metastasis. Even when the tumors are resected surgically, which is the preferred method for most UK patients according to Cancer Research UK, and surgeons can maintain good margins in tumor resection there are risks of the tumor cells returning. This recurrence is due to stem cells in the tumor itself.
Normal adult stem cells are pluripotent, or able to differentiate into different cell lines, for example the mesenchymal stem cells in the bone marrow that are able to differentiate into fat, bone, or cartilage cells to name a few. In the case of cancer stem cells, even a single cell that remains post-surgery can lead to metastasis (where tumors in other tissues are prompted by these cancer cells) or tumorigenesis (in which the tumor in the original tissue grows again). This is an everlooming threat prior to and following remission for patients. It is also where Moderna and Merck come in.
These two companies set out to battle the recurrence in advanced melanoma cases using an mRNA approach. These mRNA vaccines offer the chance for physicians to train the immune system to identify the cancer cells and treat the cells as toxins to purge. Unlike other vaccines, these melanoma cancer vaccines were tailored to each patient’s tumor. The researchers sequenced the tumors to isolate specific neoantigens (abnormal proteins produced by cancer cells), comparing them to a blood sample without cancerous cells of the patient. They utilized an artificial intelligence program to identify the neoantigens of the cancer cells that were likely to stimulate the strongest response from the patient’s immune system. These neoantigens then became the target for the mRNA vaccine.
Once administered to the patient the mRNA provides the cells with instructions to build these neoantigen proteins. As the cell builds said proteins the body’s immune system recognizes it as foreign and begins attacking them utilizing antibodies. This is the immune system training. The next time the immune system encounters the protein again, say in a regrowth of cancer cells, it has the necessary antibodies to attack and destroy the malignant proteins, preventing a tumor from regrowing.
Image created by M. Neville using Canva
This past June the companies published the results from phase 2 spanning 5 years. The data of which presents a 49% decrease in recurrence and death of patients compared to standard immunotherapy. Now in August, these companies have announced even more promising results for phase 3, regarding their focus on recurrence reduction and future metastasis prevention, though they will not publish data from this phase for another few months. Said announcement is exciting and many involved in cancer research are interested in the coming publication of the phase’s data. Though, we will have to wait for said data to understand the implications in future melanoma treatments. An issue that all the phases of testing ran into is the recruiting of participants in the US due to lingering misinformation as to how mRNA vaccines are developed following the Covid-19 vaccines developed in 2020. This smaller sample size, though statistically sound, does still reflect a possible issue in implementation of the vaccine in the US cancer treatment landscape.
Beyond issues with willingness to participate, the treatment’s cost is already a concern. Not only is the process time consuming, even with the help of AI technologies, it requires intense and technical labor that comes with a higher economic cost. These issues are interconnected with the fact that the treatments are highly specific and personalized to each individual patient hindering scalability. The personalized aspect also increases the economic barrier to entry.
However, these are concerns for future implementation if the companies are able to display the efficiency and effectiveness of these vaccines. While Moderna and Merck have been working mostly with melanoma there are other types of cancers that are expected to benefit from this research. Currently Moderna and Merck are also working with the same technology in phase 1 for colorectal, lung, and pancreatic cancers. The UK saw 50,218 new cases of lung cancer and 11,479 new cases of pancreatic cancer from 2021 to 2022 (Cancer Research UK does not have colorectal specific statistics available at this time). Outside of the US other companies are working towards similar vaccines for other cancers like BioNTech in German focusing on triple negative breast cancer in addition to colorectal and pancreatic. In China, Shenzhen Xinhe Biomedical is focusing on trials with mRNA vaccines for gastric and liver cancers.
In all this cutting edge technology is the exciting promise of a method that combats cancer relapse. The development of the treatment should continue to be innovated upon to increase the economic efficiency to allow great accessibility and to expand the types of cancers, including rarer types that don’t have many treatment options, that can benefit from this technology. So, the next time the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man appears on the big screen with his spider mutations, remember that real RNA science supports his fictional superpowers.
Article written by: M. Neville, a B.S. Animal Sciences graduate from Auburn University (AL, USA) and a current first year BVM&S graduate entry program student at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
Article edited by: Chloe Tsang, a third-year MChem Medicinal and Biological Chemistry student at the University of Edinburgh and an Online Editor for EUSci.
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