Moderna COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness differs for different types of cancer patients

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-11 03:00

International

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

While some types of cancer patients develop strong antibodies from the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, those who have recently received some treatments for blood cancers see a much smaller response, according to international research. The team tested the blood of about 500 US cancer patients before and after vaccination. They say they detected COVID-19 antibodies after vaccination in 90.3 per cent of patients with cancer, including 98.1 per cent of those with a solid tumour, 84.7 per cent of those with hematologic cancer and 70 per cent of those with lymphoid cancer. Patients who had received an anti-CD20 treatment, immunosuppressants often used for blood cancer treatment, were significantly less likely to develop COVID-19 antibodies after vaccination especially if they had received the treatment in the past six months, the researchers say.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Oncology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Moffitt Cancer Center, USA

Funder: This work was funded in part by the Moffitt Cancer Center’s support grant P30CA076292, which supported the center’s Total Cancer Care staff; Chemical Biology Core; the Participant Research, Interventions, and Measurement Core; Cancer Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics Core; Tissue Core; and Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource Core. The state of Florida funds provided to the Moffitt Center for Immunization and Infection Research in Cancer also supported this study. This work was additionally supported in part by research grant MISP 60276 from the Investigator-Initiated Studies Program of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. Development of SARS-CoV-2 reagents was partially supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance contract HHSN272201400008C.

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