Melanoma survivor grateful for personalized cancer vaccine clinical trial
BY Lany Kimmons
October 22, 2026
Story highlights
- A sore on Tony Hout’s ear led to a melanoma diagnosis. Surgery revealed the cancer had spread to a lymph node in his neck.
- Tony joined a clinical trial at UT MD Anderson testing a personalized cancer vaccine.
- Tony continues regular follow-up care and hopes the research will help other people with melanoma.
Tony Hout first noticed a sore on the top of his ear after he got a bad sunburn while watching his son play soccer in the summer of 2023. It kept scabbing over and bleeding. “I thought it was just taking a long time to heal,” he recalls.
Fast-forward to March 2024: his ear became swollen, red and painful during a family lake trip. A visit to urgent care led him to a dermatologist, who biopsied the sore and a spot on his chest. Both came back positive for stage 2 melanoma, the most aggressive type of skin cancer.
The dermatologist sent Tony to UT MD Anderson. He and his wife, Kim, lived near Houston at the time, so they knew of UT MD Anderson’s reputation.
Surgery revealed his melanoma had spread
At UT MD Anderson, Tony met with surgical oncologist Ashley Holder, M.D.
During surgery, surgeons found melanoma in a lymph node in his neck. UT MD Anderson changed his diagnosis to stage 3C melanoma.
“Learning that the melanoma had spread changed the way I thought about my future,” Tony says. He wanted to understand his treatment options and what they meant for him and his family.
Research nurse Sydney Nguyen told him about a Phase 3 clinical trial led by melanoma specialist and researcher Hussein Tawbi, M.D., Ph.D., at UT MD Anderson. The trial was testing a personalized messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer vaccine that would be made using tissue removed during Tony’s surgery.
How a personalized melanoma vaccine works
To make a personalized vaccine, researchers would analyze the tumor removed during surgery to identify genetic changes that make it different from normal cells. These mutations can produce abnormal proteins called neoantigens. Researchers would use this information to create a personalized mRNA vaccine for Tony that would train his immune system to recognize the tumor cells.
For people with stage 3C melanoma, the risk of melanoma returning can be more than 50%. Immunotherapy can cut that risk nearly in half, and researchers hope a personalized vaccine given with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug that helps the immune system target cancer cells, can reduce the risk even further.
Joining the melanoma vaccine clinical trial
Tony’s family read the study materials and talked through the decision. Some of his children were skeptical about vaccines, and he had questions, too.
“We’re talking about joining something that’s really cutting-edge,” he remembers thinking.
After weighing their options, Tony and his family chose to move forward with the clinical trial, hopeful that the personalized cancer vaccine could offer him more time.
The trial was double-blind, which meant that Tony didn't know whether he was receiving the investigational vaccine or a placebo. He did know that he was experiencing significant side effects after his injections.
The fatigue hit within hours. After his Friday injections, he sometimes couldn’t get out of bed until Tuesday.
Around his sixth injection, doctors found squamous cell carcinoma on his hand. He had Mohs surgery to remove the cancer; the surgeons used tissue from under his arm to repair his hand.
Just two days later, he received another trial injection in his other arm. Recovering from hand surgery while managing the vaccine’s side effects made that week especially hard. He wondered if he could make it through the remaining injections. But he kept going and completed them.
Melanoma vaccine clinical trial results show reduced risk of cancer recurrence or spread
Results from the Phase 3 clinical trial Tony participated in will be presented at the 2026 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress on Oct. 24, 2026.
The results showed that adding a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine to pembrolizumab reduced the risk of melanoma returning or spreading compared with pembrolizumab alone. The combination reduced the risk of cancer recurrence or death by 42% and the risk of distant metastasis or death by 38%. At 24 months, an estimated 17.8% of patients in the vaccine group had experienced a recurrence or death, compared with 30% of patients who received pembrolizumab alone.
Researchers will continue to follow patients to learn more about the treatment’s long-term benefits and whether it can help more people with high-risk melanoma stay cancer-free. This approach also has potential for use in other cancer types and settings, offering new ways to train the immune system to recognize cancer.
“Patients like Tony play an important role in advancing cancer research,” says Tawbi. “Being part of this progress and being able to offer continuously improving treatment is something that I’m very proud of.”
A new perspective on melanoma diagnosis and treatment
In 2025, Tony and his wife moved to Indiana to be closer to family. They have seven children and eight grandchildren in Indiana and Texas.
At a school fundraiser for a local family affected by cancer, families walked around a football field as their names and stories were announced. “I remember about five people with melanoma, and I was the only one still alive,” he says.
People had told him melanoma wasn’t a big deal if it was caught early, but he was hearing about people who had died from it, including some whose deaths were recent. “It made me realize how serious melanoma can be and how fortunate I was to receive care at UT MD Anderson,” he says.
Tony’s experience changed how he thinks about sun protection. He now wears long sleeves and bucket hats and keeps extra hats in every vehicle. His doctors explained that decades of sun exposure may have contributed to his melanoma.
Gratitude for cancer research
Tony and Kim return to UT MD Anderson every three months for scans and follow-up care.
In May 2026, he reached two years of follow-up with Dr. Holder. “She told me I could begin seeing her every six months instead of every three,” he says. “That was encouraging news.”
Tony still has bouts of extreme fatigue. “The treatment was hard, but I’m grateful for the care I’ve received at UT MD Anderson and for the chance to take part in research that could help other patients,” he says. He encourages people with melanoma to ask their care teams about clinical trials.
Request an appointment at UT MD Anderson online or call 1-877-632-6789.
The treatment was hard, but I’m grateful for the care I’ve received at UT MD Anderson and for the chance to take part in research that could help other patients.
Tony Hout
Survivor