Study suggests Covid jab could boost cancer treatment

Vaccines for Covid-19 can “turbo-charge” a certain type of cancer treatment which harnesses the immune system to attack cancer cells, research suggests.

Academics said that the finding, once confirmed in wider studies, could “revolutionise” cancer care.

A new study, published in the journal Nature, found that patients with lung or skin cancer who had an mRNA Covid jab within 100 days of starting immunotherapy survived for significantly longer than patients who did not get the vaccine.

Researchers set out to assess whether having an mRNA Covid jab would have an impact on immunotherapy, a type of cancer treatment which helps the immune system recognise and attack cancer cells.

Specially they looked at patients getting a type of immunotherapy known as a checkpoint inhibitor, which helps by switching on the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells.

Initially studies in mice showed that a “non-specific” mRNA vaccine, combined with checkpoint inhibitors, triggered a strong “anti-tumour” response.

As a result of the finding they set out to examine data on cancer patients who were given checkpoint inhibitors who had received a Covid mRNA jab in the 100 days before starting the immunotherapy.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines work by giving the body instructions to make a small part of the virus. This helps the body launch an immune system response and means it knows how to attack the real virus if it comes in contact with it.

The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid jabs use this type of vaccine technology.

Researchers, led by experts from the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, examined data on more than 1,000 US cancer patients with either stage 3 or stage 4 cancer.

The patients either had non-small cell lung cancer or metastatic melanoma and were treated at MD Anderson between 2019 and 2023.

Among lung cancer patients, researchers looked at data on 180 patients who had received a Covid-19 jab within 100 days of starting treatment and compared their outcomes to 704 who had not. All of the patients had immunotherapy.

They found that getting the vaccine was linked with a near doubling of average survival – from 20.6 months to 37.3 months.

Some 43 skin cancer patients received a vaccine within 100 days of initiating immunotherapy, while 167 patients did not.

Those who received the jab survived for an average of 30 to 40 months compared with an average of 26.7 months among patients who did not.

In the lab, researchers paired Covid mRNA jabs with immunotherapy and found that they could turn unresponsive cancers into responsive ones and stop tumour growth.

Academics said the finding marks a step forward towards finding a universal cancer vaccine to boost the effects of immunotherapy.

Co-senior author of the paper, Professor Elias Sayour, a paediatric oncologist and professor of paediatric oncology research, said: “The implications are extraordinary – this could revolutionise the entire field of oncologic care.

“We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilise and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients.”

He added: “If this can double what we’re achieving currently, or even incrementally – 5%, 10% – that means a lot to those patients, especially if this can be leveraged across different cancers for different patients.”

Researchers now hope to launch a large clinical trial across cancer centres in the US to confirm their findings.

Dr Duane Mitchell, of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute, added: “Although not yet proven to be causal, this is the type of treatment benefit that we strive for and hope to see with therapeutic interventions — but rarely do.

“I think the urgency and importance of doing the confirmatory work can’t be overstated.”

Commenting on the study, Professor Andrew Beggs, a senior clinical fellow and consultant colorectal surgeon from the University of Birmingham, said: “The authors looked to understand the effects of the receipt of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine and the response to a type of treatment called immunotherapy.

“Immunotherapy stimulates the body to attack the tumour as ‘foreign’ and their research showed that being given a vaccine within 100 days of the immunotherapy turbo-charged their response to treatment, giving much longer survival from their cancer.

“They replicated this finding in animal models, showing it is likely to be genuine, and not an effect caused by another phenomenon, such as the protection from serious respiratory illness from Covid infection.”

Dr Lennard Lee, associate professor in cancer vaccines from the University of Oxford, said: “This is an intriguing finding, yet we should be cautious before drawing conclusions.

“Patients who are well enough to receive a vaccine are often those already doing better, which makes it hard to separate cause from coincidence. Only a randomised trial can tell us whether the vaccine itself drives the effect.”