mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Helped Cancer Patients Live Longer, Study Finds
The findings in the preliminary study were significant -- median survival among advanced lung cancer patients doubled in the population who received the shot.
A new study found that advanced lung or skin cancer patients 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.”
This observation comes on the heels of years of research testing “mRNA-based therapeutics designed to ‘wake up’ the immune system against cancer.” The findings came from an analysis of over 1,000 patients’ records; they are preliminary, but “could have a widespread clinical impact” if validated in a randomized clinical trial.
The research team made a breakthrough in July when they realized that “to prompt a strong antitumor reaction, they needn’t go after a specific target protein in a tumor; instead, they could simply rev up the immune system – as if fighting a virus.” Pairing the “nonspecific” mRNA vaccine with common anticancer drugs in lab mice “triggered a strong antitumor response.”
The most dramatic difference among patients who received the COVID-19 vaccine was in “patients not expected to have a strong immune response, based on their tumors’ molecular makeup and other factors.” Among 180 advanced lung cancer patients who did receive the vaccine and 704 who did not, “getting the vaccine was associated with a near doubling of median survival, from 20.6 months to 37.3 months.” Further research in mouse models showed that researchers “could turn unresponsive cancers into responsive ones, thwarting tumor growth.”
