New research suggests Covid vaccines may do more than attack the coronavirus, potentially helping cancer patients live longer.
Studies in mice and an analysis of the medical records of cancer patients (who received mRNA injections for COVID-19 before starting immunotherapy for cancer treatment) revealed a surprising pattern: Vaccinated patients lived significantly longer than those who had not received the injections.
A team of researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center presented the results at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin and published them in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
The results, they say, reveal that mRNA vaccines not only prevent infection, but also “wake up” and prompt the body’s immune system to fight tumors.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which use weakened or inactive parts of a virus to activate the immune system and create a defense, mRNA vaccines deliver a small strand of genetic code known as “messenger RNA” directly to the body’s cells.
The cell reads this blueprint as an instruction to make a spike protein that mimics that of the virus and displays it on its surface, effectively waving a red flag that alerts the immune system to build a defense.
The body then creates antibodies and memory cells are trained to recognize and attack that protein spike if it ever appears again.
Cancer researchers said they began to notice a positive pattern among patients undergoing immunotherapy for their cancer treatment and who had also received a Covid mRNA vaccine, versus those who had not.
Only about 20% of cancer patients who receive immunotherapy (which harnesses a person’s immune system to fight cancer cells) respond to treatment. Finding a way to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy drugs has been a feat that researchers have been exploring for years, with little success.
Dr. Adam Grippin, senior radiation oncology resident at MD Anderson Cancer Center, said the COVID mRNA vaccine acts like a siren to activate the immune system.
He said: “What we found is that in cancer patients, the immune system is activated within the tumor and reprogrammed to start killing the cancer.
“By analyzing more than 1,000 cancer patients receiving immunotherapy treatment at MD Anderson, we found that those patients who received the Covid vaccine at the time they began their immunotherapy lived significantly longer than patients who did not receive that vaccine.”
Research suggested that an already available vaccine could be the secret to increasing the cancer patient’s own immune-fighting power.
Dr. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, associate vice president of clinical and translational research at VCU Health, explained, “One of the challenges with immunotherapy is that only 20 to 40 percent of people who receive immunotherapy have a significant response.”
Doctors cautioned that the research is preliminary and clinical trials are still needed to confirm the link.
Researchers are looking to enroll 500 people in the Phase 3 clinical trial. Once it’s underway, Grippin says it will still be a few more years before they have final results.
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