Journal
NATURE MEDICINE
Volume 27, Issue 11, Pages 2002-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41591-021-01542-z
Keywords
-
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01AI099108, R01AI129945, R37AG020719, T32AG058503]
- University of Arizona funds
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Cancer patients showed diminished immune responses to the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine compared to the control group, but a third dose of the vaccine was found to be safe and significantly improved humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have shown high efficacy, but immunocompromised participants were excluded from controlled clinical trials. In this study, we compared immune responses to the BNT162b2 mRNA Coronavirus Disease 2019 vaccine in patients with solid tumors (n = 53) who were on active cytotoxic anti-cancer therapy to a control cohort of participants without cancer (n = 50). Neutralizing antibodies were detected in 67% of patients with cancer after the first immunization, followed by a threefold increase in median titers after the second dose. Similar patterns were observed for spike protein-specific serum antibodies and T cells, but the magnitude of each of these responses was diminished relative to the control cohort. In most patients with cancer, we detected spike receptor-binding domain and other S1-specific memory B cell subsets as potential predictors of anamnestic responses to additional immunizations. We therefore initiated a phase 1 trial for 20 cancer cohort participants of a third vaccine dose of BNT162b2 (NCT04936997); primary outcomes were immune responses, with a secondary outcome of safety. At 1 week after a third immunization, 16 participants demonstrated a median threefold increase in neutralizing antibody responses, but no improvement was observed in T cell responses. Adverse events were mild. These results suggest that a third dose of BNT162b2 is safe, improves humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 and could be immunologically beneficial for patients with cancer on active chemotherapy.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available