STAT+: The mystery of Moderna’s magic algorithm

A personalized cancer vaccine developed by Moderna and Merck has generated widespread enthusiasm since the companies announced last week that it had succeeded in a late-stage trial. If regulators ultimately approve it, the treatment will be a triumph of immunology and cancer biology. But it may also be a triumph of the algorithm. The vaccine, intismeran autogene, would be the first approved medicine whose genetic instructions — that is, the individual letters of its mRNA — is determined by a com...