The breakthrough mRNA vaccine that enabled the world to fight Covid-19 may also be used to fight cancers of the lung or skin
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NEW DELHI — The breakthrough mRNA vaccine that enabled the world to fight Covid-19 may also be used to fight cancers of the lung or skin, according to a study.
Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Texas called it a defining moment in a decade-plus of research testing mRNA-based therapeutics designed to "wake up" the immune system against cancer.
In their study, presented at the ongoing 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin, the team shared that the patients with advanced lung or skin cancer who received a Covid-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy drugs lived significantly longer than those who did not get the vaccine.
The findings from an analysis of more than 1,000 patients' records are preliminary, but if validated in a randomised clinical trial now in design, the study could have a widespread clinical impact.
"The implications are extraordinary -- this could revolutionise the entire field of oncologic care," said senior researcher Elias Sayour, paediatric oncologist at the University of Florida.
"We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilise and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients."
Short for messenger RNA, mRNA molecules are found in every cell and carry the genetic information needed to make proteins.
To find out if the Covid mRNA vaccine works like the nonspecific vaccine, the team analysed existing data from patients with Stage 3 and 4 non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic melanoma treated at MD Anderson from 2019 to 2023.
The most dramatic difference was seen in patients not expected to have a strong immune response, based on their tumours' molecular makeup and other factors.
"The results from this study demonstrate how powerful mRNA medicines truly are and that they are revolutionising our treatment of cancer," said Jeff Coller, a leading mRNA scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, US.