New York City-based NYU Langone Health's Perlmutter Cancer Center launched a phase 3 trial for its metastasis melanoma mRNA vaccine.
The new trial, which enrolled more than 1,000 participants across the U.S. and Australia and has an 85-month follow-up plan, will evaluate the effectiveness of combining pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug, with the personalized mRNA vaccine V940.
V940 trains the immune system to attack proteins called neoantigens that are specific to a patient's tumor and is based on a sequence researchers do of the tumor. It can target up to 34 neoantigens.
The previous phase 2b trial showed promising results, according to a March 26 system news release.