Covid jab sparks immune response to fight cancer, study finds

'The implications are extraordinary'

A groundbreaking new study, first reported in The Independent, has found that patients battling advanced lung or skin cancer who also received a Covid mRNA jab within 100 days of starting immunotherapy treatment, saw significant improvements compared to those who didn't.

The research, completed by teams in the United States, indicates that those who took the jab lived "significantly longer."

The findings are based on analysis of more than 1,000 patients’ records, carried out by the University of Florida and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Scientists have been investigating mRNA-based treatments for more than a decade, aiming to finding a way of awakening the human body's immune system against cancer, and see this latest discovery as a “significant step” towards their long-term goal of creating a universal cancer vaccine.

Many forms of cancer weaken the immune systems by impairing the production or function of white blood cells, which are crucial for fighting infections.

At current, the results of the study are still considered to be "preliminary", so for the study to be carried forward, its results will have to be replicated and validated in a randomised clinical trial.

Senior researcher at the University of Florida Dr Elias Sayour summarised the significance of the new research:
“The implications are extraordinary. This could revolutionise the entire field of oncologic care."

He added: “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.”

How does the vaccine work?

“One of the mechanisms for how this works is when you give an mRNA vaccine, that acts as a flare that starts moving all of these immune cells from bad areas like the tumour to good areas like the lymph nodes,” Dr Sayour said.

When usually treating patients with advanced lung and skin cancers, doctors tend to focus on the use of drugs that recognise and then "attack" cancer cells, which can sometimes have an exhausting effect on those in later disease stages. This new study should offer a real alternative to that technique.

As further backing to their findings, researchers replicated their study in mice.

By pairing typical immunotherapy drugs with a Covid-targeted mRNA vaccine, they found that unresponsive cancers were transformed into responsive ones, which in turn reduced tumour growth.

News of the research project was made public after the findings were presented at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin this week.