Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE) shares are trading higher Wednesday, moving in sympathy with mRNA cancer vaccine-related companies after Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK) and Moderna Inc (NASDAQ:MRNA) announced that their combination therapy of intismeran autogene and Keytruda showed positive recurrence-free survival results in melanoma patients.

Pfizer’s BioNTech Ties Make it an mRNA Proxy

Pfizer’s move today comes largely from its standing as one of the market’s go-to mRNA proxies, thanks to its long-running partnership with BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX). That relationship gave Pfizer an equity stake in BionNTech, and the two companies still work together on updated vaccine formulations built on BioNTech’s mRNA platform.

With Merck and Moderna validating mRNA-based cancer treatment as a real clinical path forward, investors appear to be extending some of that optimism to Pfizer given its own ties to the underlying technology.

Merck and Moderna’s Melanoma Trial Hits its Key Goals

Merck and Moderna unveiled early results Wednesday from their Phase 3 INTerpath-001 study, which paired intismeran autogene, a personalized mRNA cancer treatment also called V940 or mRNA-4157, with Merck’s existing drug Keytruda. Doctors had already surgically removed tumors from every patient enrolled in the trial, all of whom had stage IIB-IV melanoma.

Looking at data from an interim checkpoint built into the trial’s design, patients on the combination therapy fared meaningfully better than those getting Keytruda by itself, both in how long they went without their cancer returning and in how long it took before the disease spread to distant parts of the body, with both differences large enough to be considered statistically real.

This is a milestone moment on more than one front. It’s the first time an individualized neoantigen therapy has cleared a Phase 3 trial, and also the first time any mRNA-based cancer treatment has done so. On top of that, no other Phase 3 study has previously shown a meaningful edge over Keytruda used alone after surgery in melanoma patients whose tumors were fully removed.

The study isn’t finished yet, researchers intend to keep watching patients over time to gather more data, including whether the combination extends overall survival.

PFE Shares Are Climbing

PFE Price Action: Pfizer shares were up 3.27% at $28.15 at the time of publication on Wednesday, according to Benzinga Pro. The stock is trading near 52-week highs of $28.74.

Read Also: Why Is BioNTech Stock Surging on Wednesday?

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