COVID mRNA Vaccine Induces Immune Response Against Cancer

New research at the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has found that patients with advanced lung or skin cancer who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy drugs lived significantly longer than those who did not get the vaccine. 

The study involved records of 180 advanced lung cancer patients who received a COVID vaccine within a 100-day period before or after starting immunotherapy drugs and 704 treated with the same drugs who did not receive the vaccine. Getting the vaccine was associated with a near doubling of median survival, from 20.6 months to 37.3 months.

Of the metastatic melanoma patients, 43 received a vaccine within 100 days of initiating immunotherapy, while 167 patients did not receive a vaccine. With the vaccine, median survival increased from 26.7 months to a range of 30 to 40 months; at the time the data were collected, some patients were still alive, meaning the vaccine effect could be even stronger.

Receiving non-mRNA pneumonia or flu vaccines resulted in no changes in longevity.

To back their findings, UF researchers then used mouse models to pair immunotherapy drugs with an mRNA vaccine targeted specifically at COVID spike protein. Those experiments showed they could turn unresponsive cancers into responsive ones, thwarting tumor growth. “One of the mechanisms for how this works is when you give an mRNA vaccine, that acts as a flare that starts moving all of these immune cells from bad areas like the tumor to good areas like the lymph nodes,” said Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, a UF Health pediatric oncologist and the Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research.

The next step is to launch a large clinical trial through the UF-led OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, a consortium of hospitals, health centers and clinics in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, California and Minnesota. “One of our key motivations at OneFlorida is to move discoveries from academic settings out into the real world and the places where patients get care,” said Betsy Shenkman, PhD, who leads the consortium.

If confirmed, the new findings unlock numerous possibilities, and the researchers said an even better nonspecific universal vaccine could be designed. For patients with advanced cancers, the increased survival from such a universal vaccine could provide a priceless benefit: more time. “If this can double what we’re achieving currently, or even incrementally — five percent, 10 percent — that means a lot to those patients, especially if this can be leveraged across different cancers for different patients,” said Dr. Sayour, an investigator with UF’s McKnight Brain Institute.