Patients with cancer who received a covid mRNA vaccine within 100 days of beginning immunotherapy treatment gained significant benefit in terms of survival and disease progression, new research suggests.1
The findings suggest a possible unforeseen benefit from covid mRNA vaccines, although the results come from an observational study and so can’t demonstrate causality. A randomised trial will be needed to show if it is the vaccine itself that drives the effect.
It comes as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are becoming more commonly used to treat cancers. ICIs unleash the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. They rely on pre-existing anti-cancer immunity, however, which is absent in most patients.
To tackle this gap, researchers have been developing personalised cancer vaccines that can sensitise tumours to ICIs by directing immune attacks against preselected antigens. Developing them takes considerable manufacturing time and is expensive, however.
But the new study, published in Nature, shows …
