People with advanced lung or skin cancer who were taking certain immunotherapy drugs lived substantially longer if they also got a Pfizer or Moderna shot within 100 days of starting treatment, according to preliminary research.
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For this study, we looked back at over a thousand patients with lung cancer and melanoma who were treated with immune therapy at our institution. We found that those patients who happened to receive a COVID mRNA vaccine around the time they started that immune therapy live significantly longer than patients who did not receive a vaccine. What we found is that CO mRNA vaccines act like a siren to activate the immune system throughout the body. One of the problems with immune therapy is that it only works in patients whose immune systems are already able to kill their cancer. What we found is that the CO mRNA vaccine can reprogram immune systems to kill cancer in a way that allows immune therapy to work more effectively. This data is incredibly exciting because it suggests that mRNA vaccines, even those that are widely available, might be used as a tool to reprogram patients immune systems to kill cancer. But even though the data is promising, we must validate this in a phase 3 clinical trial before we apply these results in clinic. And that’s what exactly what our next step is. Two most important conclusions here are that there’s a potential that a currently available vaccine could improve responses to our patients. And then there’s also really we’ve opened the door to the possibility that we could develop even better universal RNA therapeutics to sensitize patients who otherwise wouldn’t respond to immune therapy.
