mRNA Vaccine Within 100 Days of Immunotherapy Tied to Longer Survival

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Florida reported this week that cancer patients who received an mRNA COVID19 vaccine within 100 days of beginning immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy lived substantially longer than similar patients who did not receive the vaccine. The findings, published in Nature and presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress, are based on a retrospective review of more than 1,000 patients treated at MD Anderson between 2019 and 2023 for advanced non small cell lung cancer or metastatic melanoma.

The analysis compared outcomes for patients who had received a Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine near the start of immunotherapy with those who had not. Among lung cancer patients, 180 who received an mRNA vaccine were compared with 704 who did not; median overall survival was 37.3 months for the vaccinated group versus 20.6 months for the unvaccinated group. In the melanoma cohort, 43 vaccinated patients were compared with 167 unvaccinated patients; vaccinated patients had substantially longer follow up survival and many had not yet reached a median survival at the time of analysis, while median...