mRNA COVID-19 vaccines appear to have a surprising benefit for some cancer patients. A study published in Nature shows that the vaccine can extend the lives of people undergoing cancer treatment by enhancing the effectiveness of immunotherapy.
An analysis of nearly 1,000 people treated for advanced skin and lung cancers reveals that those who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine within 100 days of starting drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors lived nearly twice as long as those who did not get the vaccine within this period.
Researchers will conduct a clinical trial, expected to start before the year’s end, to validate these findings.
“The results are just remarkable,” said Dr. Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., pediatric oncologist with Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R.Freeman Professor for Paediatric Oncology Research at the University of Florida, told New Scientist.
Sayour said the mRNA vaccine could be the “master key” to enhancing immune response in people with cancer, but more research is needed to confirm this. “I don’t like making clinical recommendations unless things are proven. When you’re trying to use the immune system to fight cancer, there are also risks,” he said.
Sayour and his colleagues also analyzed the records of people with advanced lung cancer treated at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Of the 884 patients with advanced lung cancer who received checkpoint inhibitors, 180 had an mRNA COVID-19 vaccination within 100 days of starting the treatment. They had a survival time of around 37 months, compared to 20 months for those who were not vaccinated.
Additionally, 210 people had melanomas that had begun to spread to other parts of the body, 43 of whom were vaccinated within 100 days of starting checkpoint inhibitor treatment. They had a survival time of approximately 30-40 months, compared with 27 months for those who were not vaccinated during this period. Some vaccinated individuals were still alive when the study ended, so their survival time could be even longer.
The researchers presented their findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin on Oct. 19.
Jeff Coller, Ph.D., a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a leading mRNA scientist, noted that the findings emphasize the significant impact of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s early response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The results from this study demonstrate how powerful mRNA medicines truly are and that they are revolutionising our treatment of cancer,” Coller told ecancer.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under the Trump administration, recently announced significant cuts to funding for mRNA vaccine development.
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