Moderna and Merck outline strategy for pairing personalised mRNA cancer vaccines with Keytruda

Speaking at the STAT Summit in Boston, Moderna president Stephen Hoge and Merck Research Laboratories president Dean Li discussed the ongoing collaboration between the two companies on personalised mRNA-based cancer vaccines. The partnership centres on combining tumour-specific neoantigen vaccines with pembrolizumab (Keytruda), Merck's PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, in the hope that the combination will generate stronger and more durable anti-tumour immune responses than either agent alone.

Hoge and Li described the programme as still at an exploratory stage, noting there is a "lot of exploring to do" following earlier clinical results that drew attention to the approach. The strategy relies on sequencing an individual patient's tumour to identify somatic mutations that give rise to neoantigens — peptides unique to that tumour — and then encoding those neoantigens in a personalised mRNA vaccine manufactured to order.

The STAT Summit discussion did not include new trial data; reporting reflects the executives' public statements on strategy and direction. Earlier data from the Moderna–Merck melanoma programme were covered in a recent Genetic Current cluster on 5 October 2026. The broader clinical picture for cancer mRNA vaccines, including divergent trial results from other programmes, has also been previously reported.