Rebecca Dent MD; ESMO 2026: Dato-DXd Brings Dramatic CNS Responses to Patients with Brain Metastases from Resected Inoperable or Metastatic Triple Negative Breast Cancer

MADRID, Spain— Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines for a range of tumor types are now seen as a realistic possibility thanks to mRNA technology already harnessed for treating melanoma in the phase III INTerpath-001 trial reported at the 2026 Annual Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology. Peter Goodwin heard the latest on the potential of cancer vaccines from Scientific Co-Chair of ESMO 2026, James Larkin PhD FRCP F Med Sci, Head of The Royal Marsden Skin Unit, and Joint Training Programme Director for Medical Oncology and Lead of the Cancer Immunotherapy Theme at The Royal Marsden’s Institute of Cancer Research NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, in London UK.

MADRID, Spain—Individualized vaccination as adjuvant therapy for patients with stage two to four resected melanoma has achieved positive and highly encouraging outcomes according to findings from the INTerpath-001: Phase 3 study reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology 2026 congress. Patients in the study were randomized to treatment with the mRNA-based neoantigen therapy intismeran autogene added to standard immune checkpoint inhibitor adjuvant therapy, and compared with a control arm of patients receiving checkpoint inhibition alone.

Charles E Geyer MD, at ESMO 2025, discusses DESTINY-Breast05 results, revealing trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) significantly improves disease-free survival for HER2-positive early breast cancer patients with residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy. T-DXd outperformed trastuzumab emtansin