The benefit of mRNA vaccines in cancer treatment is ongoing, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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People with lung cancer or melanoma who were receiving immunotherapy and got a Covid vaccine within 100 days of initiating treatment saw dramatically improved survival compared to those folks who did not receive a vaccine, a new study shows. mRNA expert Jeff Coller at Johns Hopkins says there is a history here.

Coller: This study is just one of a number of things that have come out in the last few years. So back in 2022 researchers had shown that you could go into a pancreatic tumor and then identify specific aspects in that tumor that were different from the rest of the body. And then you could take that information and put it into an mRNA and then inject that mRNA into the tumor. And in that case they had 50% of the patients in that small clinical trial survived and a follow up study that came out just a few months ago shows that those patients are still alive.  :34

Coller notes that mRNAs are made by our bodies all the time. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.