Moderna is confronting a naming dilemma as hostility toward vaccines inside the federal government reshapes its business. The Massachusetts-based biotech company has seen plans for next-generation mRNA vaccines against flu and emerging pathogens falter as vaccine skeptics gained influence. Canceled contracts and unfriendly regulators have intensified the pressure, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, unwound support for dozens of projects, including a ? million award to Moderna for a bird flu vaccine. By January, the company was warning it might have to stop late-stage programs to develop vaccines against infections altogether.
That has increased the importance of Moderna’s cancer program with Merck, which uses mRNA to train the immune system to attack tumors. The approach works by sequencing a patient’s cancer cells, identifying distinctive neoantigens on their surface, and packaging the genetic code for those molecules into a shot so the immune system can target cells carrying those markers. Mechanistically, it resembles the covid-19 vaccines, but the immune response is aimed at cancer rather than a virus. This year, Moderna and Merck showed that such shots halved the chance that patients with the deadliest form of skin cancer would die from a recurrence after surgery.
Despite that mechanism, the companies have moved away from the word vaccine. In formal communications, Moderna has not called the shot a cancer vaccine since 2023, when it partnered with Merck and adopted the label individualized neoantigen therapy, or INT. Moderna’s chief executive said the change was meant to better describe the program’s goal, while the treatment framing also reflects the fact that patients already have cancer. The shift also serves a strategic purpose by distancing the work from growing vaccine fearmongering in the United States, even as Moderna executives continue to defend the underlying science of using the immune system to fight both infections and cancers.
The language change has drawn mixed reactions from clinicians involved with the research. Some argue the treatment should still be called a vaccine because that is what it is, and they worry that softening the term could create confusion for trial volunteers. Others see the renaming as acceptable if it helps the research continue in a hostile political climate. Moderna has continued that approach in recent scientific communications, avoiding the word vaccine in the main text of its latest published results. So far, federal officials have had little to say publicly about the company’s cancer program under its new terminology.
