Moderna's shares doubled in a single day. The reason is neither a takeover nor a new product on the market - it is clinical trial results showing that an experimental vaccine-based therapy reduced the recurrence of melanoma and prevented it spreading to other parts of the body.

The therapy, called intismeran, combines an immunotherapy drug developed by the American pharmaceutical company Merck with an mRNA vaccine - the same type of technology the world got to know en masse through covid. The difference is that this vaccine is made individually, based on the mutations found in the tumour of the specific patient.

The numbers that tore up the markets

At the Nasdaq open, the company's shares jumped by over 84 percent, to 115.91 dollars, before reaching 126.81 - more than double the previous close of 62.96 dollars. Merck's shares rose by over eight percent. Analysts estimate that the therapy could bring in around three billion dollars in revenue from melanoma treatment alone by 2035.

The trial covered 1,137 high-risk melanoma patients who had previously had the tumour surgically removed. One group received around nine doses of the immunotherapy drug combined with a personalised vaccine over the course of a year, the other only the immunotherapy drug.

Before we celebrate

A market strategist warned that small investors should keep their expectations in check: the complete trial data has not yet been published, the overall survival results are still awaited, and producing personalised vaccines in large quantities may turn out to be expensive and complicated.

That last point is the key. A vaccine made separately for each tumour is not a pill packaged a million times. It is a product requiring a sample, an analysis and a production cycle per patient - which means the question „what does it cost\" will be at least as hard as the question „does it work\".

Where we sit in all this

Therapies of this order reach the systems that can pay for them first. When the price per patient is measured in tens of thousands, the queue is set not by the diagnosis but by the health fund's budget. If intismeran really does reach approval, the question for our region will not be whether the drug exists - everyone will know that. The question will be how many years later.