Life Sciences & Medicine Active Updated Aug 20, 2026
Can the technology behind the COVID vaccines fight cancer too?
The expanding reach of mRNA vaccines
Where it stands as of Sep 4, 2026
The FDA approved mFlusiva, Moderna's mRNA seasonal flu vaccine for adults 50 and older, after a trial of nearly 41,000 people across 11 countries found it beat a standard flu shot by 26.6 percent. Merck and Moderna also said intismeran, a personalized melanoma vaccine built from a patient's own tumor mutations, met its primary endpoints in the first randomized Phase 3 trial of its kind. The full melanoma numbers have not been released.
Merck and Moderna's intismeran, a personalized mRNA vaccine built from a patient's own tumor mutations, is the first neoantigen cancer vaccine tested in a randomized Phase 3 trial, aimed at preventing melanoma recurrence after surgery. The stakes are whether a treatment built patient by patient can extend disease-free years and validate mRNA as a platform beyond infectious disease.
The story so far
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Aug 20, 2026 Latest
Merck and Moderna announced that intismeran, a personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine encoding up to 34 tumor-specific mutations, met its primary endpoints in the first randomized Phase 3 trial of a neoantigen cancer vaccine, improving recurrence-free and distant metastasis-free survival among 1,137 patients when added to Keytruda after surgery, though full numbers are still pending.
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Aug 9, 2026
The FDA's approval of mFlusiva came exactly one year after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled 22 mRNA vaccine projects on August 5, 2025, after nine expert advisers he appointed voted unanimously that the vaccine's benefits outweigh its risks. Vox reported the 2024-25 flu season caused 51 million illnesses, 710,000 hospitalizations and 45,000 deaths in the US, more than car crashes that year, with infection carrying about six times the normal heart attack risk in the following week.
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Aug 7, 2026
The FDA approved mFlusiva, Moderna's mRNA seasonal flu vaccine for adults 50 and older, after a trial of nearly 41,000 people across 11 countries found it beat a standard flu shot by 26.6 percent overall and 27.4 percent in people 65 and older. The approval came a year after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled 22 mRNA vaccine projects worth about 500 million dollars, and followed FDA official Vinay Prasad initially refusing to review the file before reversing course and leaving the agency in April.
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