After Moderna's Cancer Vaccine Sent Biotech Running, Who Might Be the Next Oncology Disruptors?
Moderna's cancer vaccine with Keytruda just worked. That's huge: the stock nearly tripled, and the whole biotech index moved. As attention around oncology innovators increases, several other companies are doing exciting things that may be worth watching.
This week Merck (NYSE: MRK) and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) reported that their personalized cancer vaccine, used together with Keytruda, met its recurrence-free survival endpoint after surgery in a large late-stage melanoma trial. That's huge. Moderna jumped about 177% in one session, taking the company from roughly $25 billion to about $69 billion. The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSEARCA: XBI) rose about 5.9% the same day.
Keytruda is already one of the most important medicines in cancer. Merck booked about $31.7 billion from it in 2025. This trial tested a personalized mRNA vaccine plus Keytruda against Keytruda alone, in 1,137 patients whose melanoma had already been removed. Merck and Moderna called it the first Phase 3 win for an mRNA cancer therapy, and the first time a Phase 3 study showed a meaningful improvement over Keytruda alone after surgery in this setting. Full data have not been presented yet. It is not an approval. The result was still large enough to jolt the whole class.
As attention around oncology innovators increases, several other companies are doing exciting things that may be worth watching. BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) is running a wide cancer pipeline, and jumped about 22% the same afternoon. Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) spent about $4.1 billion to buy RayzeBio, adding radiation-based cancer therapies. AstraZeneca (NASDAQ: AZN) made a similar move with Fusion Pharmaceuticals.
Under the radar, and starting to gain attention in the past year, is Alpha Tau Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ: DRTS). Alpha Tau is a smaller oncology company with an innovative way to treat solid tumors. Its treatment, Alpha DaRT, puts radiation inside the tumor. Doctors place tiny sources carrying radium-224 directly into the mass. As they decay, high-energy alpha particles kill nearby cancer cells, and the radioactive daughters travel only millimeters. The aim is to destroy the tumor while leaving the surrounding tissue largely alone.
That design is also why the company fits a week about Keytruda combinations. Keytruda works by taking the brakes off the immune system so the body's own T cells can attack cancer. Doctors often want to add radiation as well, to hit the tumor locally. Ordinary radiation, fired through the body from outside, can also wipe out those same immune cells. Alpha DaRT stays inside the tumor. Nearby immune cells are designed to be largely spared, which is what you would want if you were going to use radiation together with a drug like Keytruda.
In July, the company reported results from a small head and neck cancer study that did exactly that: Alpha DaRT plus Keytruda. Eleven patients were enrolled. Nine could be evaluated. All nine responded. Four had a complete response, meaning no detectable cancer remained in the tumors being measured, and five saw their tumors shrink. Median survival was 18.2 months, as compared to historically reported data of about 19% responding and median survival of 12.3 months. Alpha Tau has said it is discussing a larger U.S. study of the combination with the FDA.
The Keytruda study is just a small part of a much bigger story. Alpha Tau has been testing the same technology in several of the hardest cancers in oncology, and the early results have been striking. In pancreatic cancer, a pooled read of two first-in-human trials, presented at Digestive Disease Week in May, showed 100% local disease control in all 19 patients who could be evaluated. Four tumors shrank. Fifteen stopped growing. Some of those patients were too sick for chemotherapy. Others had already been through as many as four prior lines of treatment.
In recurrent glioblastoma, the first three patients in the U.S. REGAIN trial had 100% local disease control, with two complete responses on imaging. Three patients is a tiny group. It is still the kind of early read that gets a company noticed. Japan granted marketing approval in February for unresectable locally advanced or locally recurrent head and neck cancer, Alpha Tau's first approval outside Israel. The company has finished enrolling 88 patients in ReSTART, its U.S. pivotal study in recurrent skin cancer. Tolmar, a U.S. urology and oncology company, put in a $20 million equity investment to commercialize Alpha DaRT in prostate cancer. Over the past year, Alpha Tau's stock has risen more than 370%, according to Yahoo Finance.
As with all biotech companies, there is risk involved: trials can fail, results can surprise, and the sector is volatile. Even so, these results so far are very promising, and the market seems to be responding very well. It is becoming a compelling one to watch.
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