EXPERT REACTION: COVID-19 vaccine may help people with cancer fight their disease

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-10-23 02:00

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Patients with advanced lung or skin cancer 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, say US researchers. The team analysed more than 1000 patients' records and found a mRNA vaccine within the first 100 days of starting therapy could help create strong immune responses, even in patients who were not expected to. In patients with lung cancer, getting the vaccine was associated with a near doubling of median survival, from 20.6 months to 37.3 months, and the median survival for patients with metastatic melanoma increased from 26.7 months to a range of 30 to 40 months and possibly more.

Expert Reaction

These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.

Associate Professor Seth Cheetham is Deputy Director of the BASE mRNA Facility at The University of Queensland

"COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have an unexpected effect; helping cancer treatments work better. Many cancers are treated with drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors which stop cancer cells from hiding from the immune system. In a new study published in the leading scientific journal Nature, researchers from the MD Anderson Cancer Centre and University of Florida examined the impact of COVID mRNA vaccines on patient immunotherapy responses. Large hospital cohorts including lung and skin cancer patients showed those who received a COVID-19 mRNA shot within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived almost twice as long as patients who did not. This effect was not seen with other non-mRNA vaccines like flu or pneumonia shots.

Why might this happen? mRNA vaccines quickly “wake up” the immune system. Within a day, blood from human volunteers given a COVID mRNA vaccine displayed a sharp rise in interferon, a natural antiviral alarm, and immune cells switched into a more alert state. In animal models, this surge helped prime cancer-fighting T cells which infiltrated tumours. Immune checkpoint inhibitors then stop cancer cells hiding from these T cells, which creates a one-two punch.

Researchers have been developing personalised mRNA cancer vaccines which use molecules from tumours to better teach the immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells. However, while this personalised approach appears highly effective in early clinical studies, it is currently expensive and logistically challenging. This new study points to a practical, inexpensive way to increase treatment effectiveness with an existing mRNA vaccine. While very promising, the human data is retrospective which demonstrates association, not proof. Despite lining up with laboratory models and experiments from patient blood, a gold-standard randomised controlled trial is required to definitively prove that mRNA COVID vaccines are effective in cancer treatment. If these confirmatory trials are successful, doctors may soon have an unexpected powerful new option for treating cancer."

Last updated: 22 Oct 2025 4:29pm

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Declared conflicts of interest COI declaration: I have received research funding from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Sartorius Stedim Australia, and Sanofi. I have received support for conference attendance, travel and accommodation from Moderna and Oxford Nanopore Technologies. BASE Facility is a member of the Alliance for mRNA medicines

Journal/
conference: Nature

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA

Funder: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer (NCI) Institute under the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center SPORE in Melanoma P50CA221703, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant P30CA016672, T32-CA196561-08 (A.J.G.), R37CA251978 (E.J.S.) and R01CA266857 (E.J.S.). This research was also supported by an FDA orphan disease award R01FD007268 (E.J.S.), foundation grants from the American Brain Tumour Association, the Radiological Society of North America, Conquer Cancer Foundation, the Cullen M. Taniguchi Immuno-Radiotherapy Symposium Seed Award, ASTRO-LUNGevity, Live Like Bella Childhood Cancer Foundation/ Florida Department of Health, CureSearch (Catapult Award), Stop Children’s Cancer and the Bonnie R. Freeman Professorship, Danny’s Dream, Ian’s Friend’s Foundation, Alex’s Lemonade Stand (R Accelerated Award), the Rally Foundation, the Medulloblastoma Initiative (MBI) and Cure Group 4 medulloblastoma consortium, The National Pediatric Cancer Foundation and philanthropic contributions to The University of Texas MD Anderson Lung Moon Shot Program. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding sources including the National Cancer Institute. We thank D. Montgomery, L. Saldarriaga, X. Ma, C. von Roemeling and D. Zhang for their help with animals experiments; D. Li for his help with statistical analysis; and the staff at the Melanoma Informatics, Tissue Resource and Translational Pathology Core (MelCore) and the Flow Cytometry and Cellular Imaging Core Facility at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the ICBR Cytometry Core (RRID: SCR_019119) and animal care facilities at the University of Florida. Images provided in this Article were created using BioRender.

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