Covid-19 mRNA-based vaccines, which have saved 2.5 million lives worldwide during the pandemic, may help stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. That’s a surprising takeaway from a new study that we and our colleagues published in the Journal Nature.
in 2016 while developing mRNA vaccines for patients with brain tumors, our team, led by pediatric oncologist Elias Sayour, discovered that mRNA can teach the immune system to kill tumors, even if the mRNA is not associated with cancer.
Based on this finding, we hypothesized that mRNA vaccines designed to target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 may also have antitumor effects.
So we looked at the clinical outcomes of more than 1,000 late-stage melanoma and lung cancer patients treated with immunotherapies called immune checkpoint inhibitors. This treatment is a common method doctors use to train the immune system to kill cancer. It does this by blocking a protein that tumor cells make to turn off immune cells so the immune system can continue to kill the cancer.
Color scanning electron micrograph of a white blood cell attached to a cancer cell. (Getty Images)
Notably, patients who received either Pfizer’s or Moderna’s mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy were more than twice as likely to be alive after three years compared to those who received neither vaccine. Surprisingly, patients with tumors that typically do not respond well to immunotherapy also saw a very large benefit, with a nearly fivefold improvement in three-year overall survival. This association between improved survival and receipt of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine remained strong even after we controlled for factors such as disease severity and co-occurring conditions.
To understand the underlying mechanism, we turned to animal models. We found that Covid-19 mRNA vaccines act as an alarm signal, prompting the body’s immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells and overcome cancer’s ability to turn off immune cells. When vaccines and immune checkpoint inhibitors are combined, they unleash the full power of the immune system to kill cancer cells.
Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist at the University of Florida Health who led the study, explains that mRNA vaccines that are not specific to a patient’s cancer can “wake up the sleeping giant that is the immune system that fights cancer.”
Why is this important?
Immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors has revolutionized cancer treatment over the past decade, enabling many patients previously considered incurable to be cured. However, these treatments are ineffective in patients with “cold” tumors that successfully evade detection by the immune system.
Our findings suggest that mRNA vaccines may provide just the spark the immune system needs to turn these “cold” tumors “hot.” If confirmed in a future clinical trial, we hope that this widely available, low-cost intervention could extend the benefits of immunotherapy to millions of patients who would otherwise not benefit from this therapy.
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What other research is being done
Unlike vaccines against infectious diseases, which are used to prevent infection, therapeutic cancer vaccines are used to train the immune system of cancer patients to better fight tumors.
We and many others are currently working hard to develop personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer patients. This requires taking a small sample of a patient’s tumor and using machine learning algorithms to predict which tumor proteins would be the best vaccine targets. However, this method can be expensive and difficult to manufacture.
In contrast, Covid-19 mRNA vaccines do not require personalization, are already widely available worldwide at low cost or free of charge, and can be administered at any point in a patient’s treatment. Our findings that Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have significant antitumor effects provide hope that they may help extend the benefits of mRNA vaccines against cancer to everyone.
What’s next
Toward this goal, we are preparing to test this treatment strategy in patients from a nationwide clinical trial in people with lung cancer. People receiving an immune checkpoint inhibitor will be randomized to receive the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine during treatment or not.
This study will tell us whether Covid-19 mRNA vaccines should be included in the standard care of patients taking immune checkpoint inhibitors. Ultimately, we hope that this approach will help many patients treated with immune therapy, and especially those who currently lack effective treatment options.
The work shows how a tool developed after a global pandemic could be a new weapon against cancer and rapidly extend the benefits of existing treatments to millions of patients. By using a known vaccine in a new way, we hope to extend the lifesaving benefits of immunotherapy to cancer patients who have previously been left out.
Research brief brief description of an interesting academic paper.
Adam Grippin, a physician scientist in cancer immunotherapy at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Dr. Christiano Marconi. candidate in immunotherapy at the University of Florida
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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