Personalised cancer vaccines are a step closer to becoming a reality, following promising results from a final-stage trial. Moderna and Merck have unveiled a personalised mRNA jab that, when combined with an established immunotherapy drug, significantly increased the length of time that post-operative melanoma patients remained cancer-free. This is a “major success in a new field of cancer treatment” that sent both of the company’s shares “surging”, said Reuters.

What did the results show?
The phase 3 trial involved 1,137 high-risk skin cancer patients, who were randomly assigned to receive either the vaccine and the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, or just Keytruda, for a year. Moderna said the latest results “demonstrate statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” in survival times for the vaccine group, and there had been “no new safety concerns”.

The two pharmaceutical giants did not give specifics about the increases in survival times, but a similar, smaller trial in 2022 found that participants who received the vaccine and Keytruda were 44% less likely to develop new tumours or die within three years. More findings from the trial will be presented at a medical conference in October.

How significant is this?
“I think it’s fair to call this a breakthrough,” Marco Gerlinger of the Barts Cancer Institute told The Times. The interim results are “proof of principle that personalised cancer vaccines work”.

The hope is that this personalised vaccine “will work for many other types of cancer”, said New Scientist. Moderna and Merck are already trialling similar personalised mRNA vaccines for types of bladder, kidney and lung cancer. BioNTech, “the other big mRNA company”, is also testing personalised cancer vaccines in human trials. Several of these early-stage trials have produced “promising results”.

Are there any caveats?
Moderna and Merck have only released an interim analysis, not the full trial data. And experts “emphasise caution” until the dataset has been peer-reviewed, said the BBC.

Investors will be watching for the “next important steps”, financial markets analyst Lale Akoner told Sky News, “which will be detailed clinical results, regulatory progress, and evidence that the technology works across other cancers”. Even then, manufacturing personalised vaccines at scale is “expensive and complex”. A Reuters analysis suggested that each vaccine could cost about £147,000.

“Hi there. I have received your email. I have printed it off. I’m now using it to light flaming cocktails for the entire bar. Best, Lucy.”

That was the jokey out-of-office reply featured in a British Airways advert a couple of years ago. But there is more to the “philosophy” of OOO emails than just trying to be funny, said The Atlantic. They can be a “rote obligation or an opportunity to make a grand statement about work and life”.

‘Cry for help’
Being hit with a “barrage” of OOO responses after sending a group email can be frustrating, said the Financial Times. You might curse your colleagues as “lazy good-for-nothings, slacking off while you toil through the long summer”, but their replies can tell you “so much more”.

Someone who says they will be “checking their emails intermittently” is almost certainly on holiday with their in-laws and “wants to reply to your email within 17 minutes rather than the usual six”. Others seeking to break their addiction to being permanently on call may claim to have “no access to internet”. Some may joke about having “smashed my phone, laptop and smartwatch and thrown them into the ocean” to ward off any potential temptation. This is a blatant “cry for help”.

I went through a phase of setting “funny” OOOs, said Sophia Money-Coutts in Country Life. But I “shudder with horror now” thinking about them. “Life’s too short; time is too precious to agonise” over what you write. “Straightforward is the way to go for everyone involved.”

‘Set expectations’ before you go
The optimum reply is “polite and concise”, gives a “specific return date” and at least one other point of contact if appropriate, said the etiquette consultancy Debretts. “Virtue signalling” – or going into too much detail about your time off – is a big “no-no”: it can come across as boastful, “smug” or like you’re “trying too hard”.

Just don’t over-worry about your OOOs, said Stylist. The most effective team members “set expectations before” they go, outlining how “online” they will be, if at all. This stops colleagues of whatever seniority “second-guessing whether they should follow up”, or being confused about what “contactable in an emergency” actually means.

Tanzania’s opposition leader Tundu Lissu gestures to supporters as he arrives at the High Court in Dar es Salaam for a pre-trial hearing. The Chadema party chair was charged last year with treason, which carries a potential death penalty, over his campaign for electoral reform. 

AFP / Getty Images

Leicestershire: Church Farm, Orton on the Hill
Fine Grade II country house set in approx. 5.85 acres. 5 beds, 5 baths, kitchen/dining room, 4 receps, self- contained 1-bed annexe, tennis court, triple garage with leisure suite. £2.1 million; Fine & Country.

Kent: Seal Chart, Sevenoaks
Delightful Grade II house with glorious gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll. 6 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, tennis court, garage. £2.5 million; Hamptons.

Kent: Vane Court, Biddenden
This magnificent and historic Grade II* Wealden hall house sits in approx. 8.5 acres. The property boasts period features including an oak-framed fireplace. 6 beds, 5 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, heated swimming pool, tennis court, pond, paddocks, garden, parking. £3.65 million; Jackson Stops.

Devon: Thatched Warren, Elstone, nr Chulmleigh
Charming Grade II thatched house set within landscaped gardens and located on the eastern slopes of the Taw Valley. 4 beds, 4 baths, 2 kitchens, 3 receps, games room, detached studio, tennis court, garden, garage. £825,000; Stags.

Trump has a new plan to crush Iran’s economy. But will he stay the course?
Stephen Collinson on CNN
Having “failed to bomb the Islamic Republic into surrender”, Donald Trump wants to “compel its capitulation” through “economic attrition”, writes Stephen Collinson. But “destroying Iran’s economy” could take years and needs the “kind of strategic patience that Trump almost never shows”. Meanwhile, upcoming US midterm elections give Iran an “incentive to escalate” attacks on shipping, pushing up “costs for American voters”. The key question for Trump is whether “Americans’ tolerance for the fallout from the war” will “run out before the regime’s does”.

Fat people cannot win, regardless of what we do. And I’ve had enough
Rebecca Shaw in The Guardian
The “common sentiment” is that “fat people who use weight loss drugs are ‘cheating’”, writes Rebecca Shaw. “What game are we playing” here? Fat people like me “are constantly badgered” to control our weight, but “now there is medicine that can make that control easier”, it’s suddenly not about the weight but whether we’ve “suffered sufficiently to ‘deserve’ it”. We “should not have to audition for your approval”, so “keep your big fat noses out of our lives”.

Ghent university shouldn’t have suspended Nathan Cofnas
Toby Young in The Spectator
The response of the “‘be kind’ brigade” to Jason Arday's death was “to whip up hatred” against the scholar who “exposed” his “academic misconduct”, writes the Free Speech Union’s Toby Young. Nathan Cofnas has now been suspended by Ghent University, which “emphasised how many people have written to it”: “the mob has spoken, is the subtext”. It’s like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” has “been rewritten by a ‘sensitivity’ reader” and now “the emperor commits suicide, while the boy is subjected to a show trial”.