Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
The most widely used COVID-19 vaccines may offer a surprise benefit for some cancer patients — revitalizing their immune systems to help fight tumors.
People People with advanced lung or skin cancer who were taking certain immunotherapy drugs lived longer if they got the disease. Pfizer Or Modern The shot shot up within 100 days of starting treatment, according to preliminary research published Wednesday in the journal Nature,
And it had nothing to do with virus infection.
Instead, the molecule that powers those specific vaccines, mRNA, helps the immune system respond better to cutting-edge cancer treatments, MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers conclude. houston and the University of Florida.
The vaccine “acts like a siren to activate immune cells throughout the body,” said lead researcher Dr. Adam Grippin, of MD Anderson. “We are making immune-resistant tumors sensitive to immunotherapy.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed skepticism about mRNA vaccines, and has cut $500 million in funding for some uses of the technology.
But the research team found the results so promising that it is preparing a more rigorous study to see whether mRNA coronavirus vaccines should be combined with cancer drugs called checkpoint inhibitors — an interim step while it designs new mRNA vaccines for use in cancer.
A healthy immune system often kills cancer cells before they become a threat. But some tumors evolve to evade immune attack. Checkpoint inhibitors remove that cover. It’s a powerful treatment – when it works. Some people’s immune cells still don’t recognize the tumor.
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is found naturally in every cell and contains the genetic instructions for making proteins for our bodies. While best known as the Nobel Prize-winning technology, scientists have long been trying to create personalized mRNA “treatment vaccines” that train immune cells to recognize the unique characteristics of a patient’s tumor.
Dr. Jeff Koller, an mRNA expert at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the work, said the new research provides “a very good clue” that perhaps an off-the-shelf approach could work. “This shows that mRNA medicines are surprising us in how beneficial they could be to human health.”
Grippin and his Florida colleagues were developing personalized mRNA cancer vaccines when they realized that a vaccine made without a specific target also induced similar immune activity against cancer.
Grippin wondered whether mRNA coronavirus shots already widely available might also have some effect.
So the team analyzed the records of nearly 1,000 advanced cancer patients undergoing checkpoint inhibitor treatment at MD Anderson — comparing those who got the Pfizer or Moderna shot with those who didn’t.
Patients who were vaccinated were almost twice as likely to survive three years after starting cancer treatment as patients who were not vaccinated. In melanoma patients, average survival was significantly longer for vaccinated patients — but exactly by how much is unclear, because few in that group were still alive when the data were analyzed.
Non-mRNA vaccines like flu shots don’t make a difference, he said.
,
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.