Merck CEO expects personalized cancer vaccine to be made faster over time

Merck $MRK CEO Rob Davis expects the personalized cancer vaccine the company is developing with Moderna $MRNA to become faster to manufacture over time, he told CNBC on Wednesday.

The process begins with sequencing a patient's tumor and ends with delivery of the finished vaccine to the hospital, a journey that currently takes six weeks. Shortening it could help the companies reach more patients.

"We are going to drive for improvement, but right now the focus really is, let's make sure we have the supply ready, we have the market ready to bring this important innovation to the market, and then we'll talk about how do we accelerate," Davis said. "But I do think over time you're going to see that timeline shortened."

Davis used the phrase "complex system" to describe the manufacturing challenge, while also saying Merck and Moderna have brought the process "down to a very tight science."

"We're doing it in our clinicals, and I only see improvement going forward," he said.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, the vaccine targets mutation patterns unique to each patient's tumor and is administered in combination with Merck's immunotherapy Keytruda. Merck and Moderna announced in August that the combination met the main goal of a Phase 3 trial in 1,137 patients with surgically removed, high-risk melanoma. Patients who received the vaccine plus Keytruda had improved recurrence-free survival compared with those who received Keytruda alone, the companies said.

Beyond melanoma, Davis said trials are underway in additional cancer types — among them non-small cell lung cancer, select bladder cancers, and renal cell carcinoma.

Moderna has said it is preparing its Marlborough, Massachusetts factory for a possible commercial launch. The plant makes patient-specific batches in parallel, the company has said.

"You like to talk that maybe you can start moving toward talking about a cure," Davis said. "We're not there yet, but we're moving in a direction with technology that's really unprecedented."

The interview followed a ribbon-cutting earlier Wednesday at Merck's West Point, Pennsylvania, campus, where the company inaugurated a new research facility it calls Advance.