Patients with advanced lung or skin cancer lived significantly longer if they received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy, a study led by University of Florida Health and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found.
The study, published Oct. 22 in Nature, analyzed data from more than 1,000 patients with Stage 3 and 4 non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic melanoma testing at Houston-based MD Anderson between 2019 and 2023.
Here are four findings:
1. For lung cancer patients, those who received the COVID vaccine had nearly double the median survival at 37.3 months, compared to those who did not receive the vaccine at 20.6 months.
2. For metastatic melanoma patients, median survival increased from 26.7 months to a range of 30 to 40 months. Some patients were still alive at the time data was collected, meaning the vaccine effect could last even longer.
3. Non-mRNA pneumonia or flu vaccines had no changes on longevity for patients.
4. Patients who were not expected to have a strong immune response based on their tumors’ molecular makeup and other factors had the most dramatic difference in survival.
“The implications are extraordinary — this could revolutionize the entire field of oncologic care,” study co-senior author Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, a pediatric oncologist at Gainesville-based UF Health, said in an Oct. 22 news release. “We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilize and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients.”
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