Elon Musk Says mRNA Has ‘Tremendous Promise,’ Turning Disease Into a ‘Software Problem,’ as Moderna Stock Rockets 177% on Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough
Radhika Anilkumar Nadig
Thu, August 20, 2026 at 8:48 AM GMT+5:30
3 min read
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Elon Musk said Wednesday that mRNA technology could fundamentally change how diseases are treated, a shift that would make medicine more of a software problem than a biological one, as Moderna Inc.(NASDAQ:MRNA) and Merck & Co Inc. (NYSE:MRK) posted a major cancer-vaccine trial win
mRNA Has ‘Tremendous’ Potential
“Despite its obvious misuse during Covid, mRNA has tremendous promise for curing diseases,” Musk said in a post on X. “Artificial RNA essentially makes curing diseases a software problem.”
Musk was replying to Eric Topol, scientist and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who said that the Phase 3 melanoma trial breakthrough builds on “signs of success” in personalized mRNA vaccines targeting pancreatic cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer
Despite its obvious misuse during Covid, mRNA has tremendous promise for curing diseases. Artificial RNA essentially makes curing diseases a software problem
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2026
A First-of-Its-Kind Cancer Trial Result
Moderna and Merck announced positive Phase 3 results for an individualized mRNA cancer vaccine, marking the first successful late-stage trial of its kind, with the treatment showing significant improvement in recurrence-free and metastasis-free survival in melanoma patients when combined with Merck’s Keytruda
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Musk’s Push for AI As Healthcare Solutions
Musk has promoted artificial intelligence as a path to transforming healthcare, saying in June that advances in synthetic RNA could make medicine increasingly programmable and potentially “cure almost anything,” and that Tesla Inc.‘s Optimus humanoid robot combined with AI “will enable universal excellent healthcare that is better than anyone receives today.”
On Tuesday, Musk backed AI to deliver major medical breakthroughs after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodeisaid AI companies must prove their value through results such as curing cancer rather than through optimistic marketing, to which Musk responded, “AI will do it.”
mRNA Peers Rally Too
BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX) gained 21.96% Tuesday to close at $113.12, as the company develops a similar individualized mRNA cancer immunotherapy, Autogene cevumeran, using the same tumor-targeting mechanism as Merck and Moderna’s melanoma therapy. The stock fell 0.55% in after-hours trading
Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:ARCT), which is collaborating with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.(NYSE:TMO) to advance an mRNA therapy for cystic fibrosis, closed 25.21% higher at $10.28 and gained another 0.78% in extended trading. Thermo Fisher rose 4.16%
