US-based RNA therapeutics company Moderna has teamed up with precision medicine company Caris Life Sciences to advance the development of its novel oncology therapeutics.
Under the multi-year partnership, Moderna will use Caris’ large library of de-identified, multi-modal data solutions to enhance the development of oncology drugs in its pipeline.
Caris’ solutions will provide optimal clinical trial design and support the discovery of novel biomarkers and characterisation of resistance mechanisms.
They are derived from whole exome sequencing, whole transcriptome sequencing and protein analyses along with claims data, said the precision medicine company.
Moderna vice president and oncology therapeutic area head Praveen Aanur said: “Partnering with Caris Life Sciences will support Moderna’s oncology portfolio with clinico-genomics data from Caris’ industry-leading and comprehensive suite of integrated precision medicine capabilities.”
Caris Life Sciences president David Spetzler said: “We are thrilled to partner with Moderna to impact and advance the field of cancer treatment with mRNA medicines, with a common goal of improving patient lives.
“The aggregate strength of our combined molecular, data science and therapeutics technologies will support the predictive modelling of patient responses to therapies, and more generally, may help improve the probability of technical and regulatory success of Moderna’s innovative medicines.”
In a separate development, Moderna has dosed the first participant in a Phase 3 study of its combination vaccine candidate against influenza and COVID-19 (mRNA-1083) in the US.
The Phase 3 clinical study is designed to evaluate the immunogenicity, safety, and reactogenicity of mRNA‐1083 compared with active control, in 8,000 adults.
In the study, licensed influenza and SAR‐CoV‐2 vaccines are co‐administered as control.
The vaccines are assessed in two independent age‐group sub‐study cohorts of 4,000 older adults, aged 65 years and above, and 4,000 adults aged 50 to 65 years.
Moderna said that its mRNA-1083 vaccine has achieved superior hemagglutination inhibition antibody titres than both licensed quadrivalent influenza vaccines.
The vaccine candidate achieved SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibody titres similar to the Spikevax bivalent booster in the Phase 1/2 study.
The mRNA‐1083 can reduce the overall burden of acute viral respiratory diseases, protecting against influenza and SARS‐CoV‐2 viruses in a single dose, said Moderna.
