COVID-19 Vaccine Tied to Increased Survival in Patients with Cancer

A study has found that for patients with certain types of advanced lung or skin cancer, administration of a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) is associated with increased overall survival.

In the study, researchers extracted data for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), melanoma treated with ICIs and any tumor histology with biopsy samples evaluating programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) to determine whether mRNA vaccines targeting nontumor antigens would sensitize tumors to ICIs.

They found that for patients with NSCLC and metastatic melanoma, administration of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of ICI initiation was associated with increased overall survival (adjusted hazard ratios, 0.51 and 0.34, respectively). With propensity score matching and among patients with immunologically cold tumors (tumor proportion score <1 percent), survival benefits were maintained. SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination stimulated a surge in type I interferon in preclinical models, prompting antigen-presenting cells to prime CD8 T cells to upregulate PD-L1 expression. Similar increases in type I interferon and antigen-presenting cell activation were seen in association with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination in humans, and increased PD-L1 expression was seen on tumor biopsies from patients with cancer.

“We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilize and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients,” said coauthor Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, from University of Florida Health.