Success after a century of failures: Inside Moderna and Merck’s cancer vaccine breakthrough

Stephane Bancel, chief executive of Moderna, was at a Lebanese restaurant celebrating a friend’s birthday late on Aug 13 when he got the call.An mRNA cancer vaccine the company had been developing with Merck had hit its mark – the first success of a therapeutic cancer vaccine in late-stage testing after more than 100 years of failed attempts.Cancer experts hailed it as the beginning of an era of custom-made vaccines that train the immune system to fight an individual patient’s cancer. In a trial of more than 1,000 patients with localised melanoma, the vaccine kept tumours from coming back or spreading.With full trial details pending, Wall Street is already estimating billions of dollars in sales.Bancel likened news from that call to the day in late 2020 that Moderna announced its Covid-19