What’s in Merck and Moderna’s cancer vaccine algorithm?

Moderna announced a $2 billion convertible debt raise one week after the Phase 3 success of its personalized cancer vaccine developed with Merck. The vaccine may become the first approved medicine whose genetic instructions are essentially written by an algorithm: for each patient, software analyzes thousands of tumor mutations and selects 34 neoantigens to encode into a bespoke mRNA vaccine.

This computational and regulatory experiment is seen by some researchers as the treatment's "secret sauce," but skeptical Wall Street investors argue that personalization may be unnecessary, and that mRNA itself could prime tumors to respond better to Keytruda. The algorithm's inner workings are proprietary; cancer vaccine expert Alex Rubinsteyn said, "I have no idea. Everyone claims what they have is proprietary intelligence."