23 oktober 2025: Bron:

Het mRNA-vaccin tegen het coronavirus stimuleert de effectiviteit van immuuntherapie en geeft beduidend langere overleving bij patiënten met gevorderde longkanker en melanomen, waar eerder immuuntherapie resistentie liet zien. Dat laat een groot Amerikaans onderzoek zien.

Een groep patiënten met gevorderde longkanker die binnen honderd dagen voor of na een injectie met de coronaprik naast hun immuuntherapie leefde op drie jaars meting meer dan 55 procent. Tegenover patiënten die geen coronaprik hadden gekregen want leefde maar 30 procent op 3-jaars meting. Ook bij melanomen was de drie jaars overleving veel beter voor de patiënten die de coronaprik hadden gekregen in vergelijking met de patiënten die geen coronaprik hadden gekregen.

Hier een grafische weergave van de resultaten uit de studie:

Fig. 1: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are associated with improved survival in patients with NSCLC or metastatic melanoma receiving immunotherapy.

a–e, Survival for patients with NSCLC (a–c) or metastatic melanoma (d,e) treated with ICI who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of initiating ICI or did not receive a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Survival is shown for all patients with NSCLC (a), patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC (b), patients with stage IV NSCLC (c) and patients with metastatic melanoma (d and e). P values and HRadj were calculated using two-sided Cox proportional hazards regression (Supplementary Tables 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11), including all variables that were significantly associated with survival on univariable analysis (Supplementary Tables 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10). The number of patients at risk at each timepoint is indicated below each graph.

De Volkskrant heeft over de studie een verklarend artikel waarin uitgelegd wordt hoe virustherapie vaker wordt gebruikt en waarom.

Hier het originele studierapport zoals gepubliceerd in Nature:

Article
Open access
Published: 22 October 2025

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade

Nature (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) extend survival in many patients with cancer but are ineffective in patients without pre-existing immunity1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Although personalized mRNA cancer vaccines sensitize tumours to ICIs by directing immune attacks against preselected antigens, personalized vaccines are limited by complex and time-intensive manufacturing processes10,11,12,13,14. Here we show that mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to ICIs. In preclinical models, SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines led to a substantial increase in type I interferon, enabling innate immune cells to prime CD8+ T cells that target tumour-associated antigens. Concomitant ICI treatment is required for maximal efficacy in immunologically cold tumours, which respond by increasing PD-L1 expression. Similar correlates of vaccination response are found in humans, including increases in type I interferon, myeloid–lymphoid activation in healthy volunteers and PD-L1 expression on tumours. Moreover, receipt of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines within 100 days of initiating ICI is associated with significantly improved median and three-year overall survival in multiple large retrospective cohorts. This benefit is similar among patients with immunologically cold tumours. Together, these results demonstrate that clinically available mRNA vaccines targeting non-tumour-related antigens are potent immune modulators capable of sensitizing tumours to ICIs.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

Data generated in this study are available in the Article and its Supplementary Information. All clinical data are de-identified to protect patient privacy. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer (NCI) Institute under the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center SPORE in Melanoma P50CA221703, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant P30CA016672, T32-CA196561-08 (A.J.G.), R37CA251978 (E.J.S.) and R01CA266857 (E.J.S.). This research was also supported by an FDA orphan disease award R01FD007268 (E.J.S.), foundation grants from the American Brain Tumour Association, the Radiological Society of North America, Conquer Cancer Foundation, the Cullen M. Taniguchi Immuno-Radiotherapy Symposium Seed Award, ASTRO-LUNGevity, Live Like Bella Childhood Cancer Foundation/Florida Department of Health, CureSearch (Catapult Award), Stop Children’s Cancer and the Bonnie R. Freeman Professorship, Danny’s Dream, Ian’s Friend’s Foundation, Alex’s Lemonade Stand (R Accelerated Award), the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, the Medulloblastoma Initiative (MBI) and Cure Group 4 medulloblastoma consortium, The National Pediatric Cancer Foundation and philanthropic contributions to The University of Texas MD Anderson Lung Moon Shot Program. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding sources including the National Cancer Institute. We thank D. Montgomery, L. Saldarriaga, X. Ma, C. von Roemeling and D. Zhang for their help with animals experiments; D. Li for his help with statistical analysis; and the staff at the Melanoma Informatics, Tissue Resource and Translational Pathology Core (MelCore) and the Flow Cytometry and Cellular Imaging Core Facility at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the ICBR Cytometry Core (RRID: SCR_019119) and animal care facilities at the University of Florida. Images provided in this Article were created using BioRender.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Adam J. Grippin, Christiano Marconi, Sage Copling, Nan Li
These authors jointly supervised this work: Elias J. Sayour, Steven H. Lin

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Adam J. Grippin, Nan Li, Chen Braun, Cole Woody, Priti Gupta, Min Wang, Annette Wu, Michael K. Rooney, Benjamin R. Schrank, Yifan Wang, Yifan Ma, Enoch Chang, Ramez Kouzy, Ada Argueta, Diana Amaya, Joe Chen, Gabriel Alatrash, William Dennis, Richard Liang, Wen Jiang & Steven H. Lin
Lillian S. Wells Department of Neurosurgery, Preston A. Wells, Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Christiano Marconi, Dhruvkumar Soni, Frances Weidert, Chao Xie, Eden Goldenberg, Chong Zhao, Anna DeVries, Paul Castillo, Nagheme Thomas, Andria Doty, Hector R. Mendez-Gomez & Elias J. Sayour
McGovern Medical School, Houston, TX, USA

Sage Copling, Andrew Kim, Jordan Jafarnia & Nina Nariman
Department of Enterprise Data Engineering and Analytics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Elliana Young
Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Seong Dong Jeong & Betty Y. S. Kim
Brain Tumor Center, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Seong Dong Jeong & Betty Y. S. Kim
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Paul Castillo & Elias J. Sayour
Department of Dermatology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

Rishabh Lohray
Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Kyle Dyson
Department of Thoracic Imaging, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Gregory Gladish
Scripps Health, San Diego, CA, USA

Jacob New
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Nikhil Copling
Department of Surgical Oncology, Division Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Julie Simon, Alicia Bea Davies & Jennifer Wargo
Department of Thoracic/Head & Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Jeff Lewis, Xiong Wei, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Hai Tran, Jianjun Zhang, Don L. Gibbons & John V. Heymach
Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Ara A. Vaporciyan
Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Andrew Johns & Padmanee Sharma
Department of Biostatistics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Jack Lee & Ryan Sun
Department of Biostatistics, The University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Ji-Hyun Lee
Department of Immunology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Padmanee Sharma
James P. Allison Institute, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Padmanee Sharma
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

Ashley Aaroe, Sanu Abraham, Lee Andrews II, Kiran K. Badami, Janna A. Baganz, Pratibha Bajwa, Gregory R. Barbosa, Hannah C. Beird, Kristy Brock, Elizabeth M. Burton, Juan Cata, Caroline Chung, Catherine Claussen, John Crommett, Michael Cutherell, Bouthaina Dabaja, Hiba Dagher, Kevin M. Daniels, Mary Domask, Giulio Draetta, Paul Edelkamp Jr, Sarah Fisher, Katy Elizabeth French, Andrew Futreal, Maria Gaeta, Myrna Godoy, Drew Goldstein, Jillian Gunther, Kate Hutcheson, David Jaffray, Jeff Jin, Teny Matthew John, Trey Kell, Mark Knafl, Rayson C. Kwan, J. Jack Lee, Jennifer Litton, Kevin W. McEnery, Mary McGuire, Benjamin Mescher, Tejo Musunuru, Mayoora Muthu, Joseph Nates, Craig S. Owen, Priyadharshini Padmakumar, Nicholas Palaskas, Jay J. Patel, Sabitha Prabhakaran, Lucas Ramsey, Vinod Ravi, Cristhiam Rojas Hernandez, Bilja Sajith, Paul A. Scheet, Stephanie Schmidt, Kenna R. Shaw, Sanjay Shete, Daniel P. Shoenthal, Lessley J. Stoltenberg, Hussein Tawbi, Anastasia Turin, Samir Unni, Benju Vicknamparampil, Max C. Weber, John Weinstein, Scott Eric Woodman, Mark C. Wozny, Carol Wu, Jia Wu, James C. Yao, Chingyi Young, Emily Yu & Steven Zatorski
Ascension, St Louis, MO, USA

Thomas A. Aloia
University Health, San Antonio, TX, USA

John Cuenca Trujillo
Oracle Health, Kansas City, MO, USA

Christopher Gibbons
Department of Surgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

Anai Kothari
Cancer Care Equity and Professional Wellness, Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI), Nashville, TN, USA

Ishwaria Subbiah
Sir Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Phillip Thompson
Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Phillip Thompson

Consortia

D3CODE Team

Ashley Aaroe
, Sanu Abraham
, Lee Andrews II
, Kiran K. Badami
, Janna A. Baganz
, Pratibha Bajwa
, Gregory R. Barbosa
, Hannah C. Beird
, Kristy Brock
, Elizabeth M. Burton
, Juan Cata
, Caroline Chung
, Catherine Claussen
, John Crommett
, Michael Cutherell
, Bouthaina Dabaja
, Hiba Dagher
, Kevin M. Daniels
, Mary Domask
, Giulio Draetta
, Paul Edelkamp Jr
, Sarah Fisher
, Katy Elizabeth French
, Andrew Futreal
, Maria Gaeta
, Myrna Godoy
, Drew Goldstein
, Jillian Gunther
, Kate Hutcheson
, David Jaffray
, Jeff Jin
, Teny Matthew John
, Trey Kell
, Mark Knafl
, Rayson C. Kwan
, J. Jack Lee
, Jennifer Litton
, Kevin W. McEnery
, Mary McGuire
, Benjamin Mescher
, Tejo Musunuru
, Mayoora Muthu
, Joseph Nates
, Craig S. Owen
, Priyadharshini Padmakumar
, Nicholas Palaskas
, Jay J. Patel
, Sabitha Prabhakaran
, Lucas Ramsey
, Vinod Ravi
, Cristhiam Rojas Hernandez
, Bilja Sajith
, Paul A. Scheet
, Stephanie Schmidt
, Kenna R. Shaw
, Sanjay Shete
, Daniel P. Shoenthal
, Lessley J. Stoltenberg
, Hussein Tawbi
, Anastasia Turin
, Samir Unni
, Benju Vicknamparampil
, Max C. Weber
, John Weinstein
, Scott Eric Woodman
, Mark C. Wozny
, Carol Wu
, Jia Wu
, James C. Yao
, Chingyi Young
, Emily Yu
, Steven Zatorski
, Thomas A. Aloia
, John Cuenca Trujillo
, Christopher Gibbons
, Anai Kothari
, Ishwaria Subbiah
& Phillip Thompson

Contributions

A.J.G., S.H.L. and E.J.S. conceived the study, developed the study methodology, directed and supervised all analyses, analysed data, provided resources, acquired funding for the study and wrote the manuscript. C.M. and N.L. conducted, directed, supervised and analysed data for preclinical studies. S.C. conducted, directed, supervised and analysed data for clinical studies. J.-H.L. directed and supervised data analysis. R.S. directed and supervised some data analysis. M.K.R. contributed to overall statistical strategy and data analysis. A.K., E.Y., R. Lohray, E.C., R.K., W.D., R. Liang, J.J., G.G. and N.N. conducted chart review and analysed data for retrospective clinical studies. C.W., M.W., C.B., A.W., S.D.J., D.S., F.W., C.X., E.G., C.Z., A. DeVries, A. Doty, P.C., B.R.S., Y.W., Y.M., J.C., N.C., B.R.S., N.T., G.A. and H.R.M.-G. designed and conducted preclinical studies. A.A., D.A., P.G., K.D. and M.W. assisted in design and execution of translational studies. J.S., A.B.D., X.W., W.R., J. Lewis, J. Lee, A.A.V., D.L.G., H.T., J.Z., J.W., J.V.H and all of the members of the Data-Driven Determinants for Covid-19 Oncology Discovery Effort (D3CODE) Team analysed, aggregated and maintained clinical databases required for retrospective clinical studies. A.J., J.W. and J.V.H. provided guidance regarding retrospective clinical analysis. J.N., B.Y.S.K., P.S. and W.J. interpreted results and developed study methodology. All of the authors contributed to writing, reviewing and editing the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Adam J. Grippin, Elias J. Sayour or Steven H. Lin.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

A.J.G. has received travel funding from Alamar Biosciences and is a scientific advisor for Sift Biosciences and BeyondSpring Pharmaceuticals. J.Z. reports grants from Merck, grants and personal fees from Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, personal fees from Bristol Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, GenePlus, Innovent and Hengrui outside the submitted work. D.L.G. is a scientific advisor for AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Menarini Richerche, 4D Pharma, Onconova Therapeutics and Sanofi. P.S. is on the scientific advisory committee for Achelois, Affini-T, Akoya Biosciences, Apricity, Asher Bio, BioAtla LLC, Candel Therapeutics, Catalio, C-Reveal Therapeutics, Dragonfly Therapeutics, Earli Inc, Enable Medicine, Henlius/Hengenix, Hummingbird, ImaginAb, InterVenn Biosciences, LAVA Therapeutics, Lytix Biopharma, Marker Therapeutics, Matrisome, Oncolytics, Osteologic, PBM Capital, Phenomic AI, Polaris Pharma, Soley Therapeutics, Spotlight, Trained Therapeutix Discovery, Two Bear Capital and Xilis, Inc., and reports private investments in Adaptive Biotechnologies, BioNTech, JSL Health, Sporos and Time Bioventures. S.H.L. receives grant funding from Beyond Spring Pharmaceuticals and Nektar Therapeutics, serves on the scientific advisory boards for Beyond Spring Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca and Creatv Microtech, and is co-founder of and holds stock options in Seek Diagnostics. J.V.H. reports being on advisory committees for BioNTech, Genentech, Mirati Therapeutics, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Regeneron, Takeda, BerGenBio, Jazz, Curio Science, Novartis, AstraZeneca, BioAlta, Sanofi, Spectrum, GlaxoSmithKline, EMD Serono, BluePrint Medicine and Chugai; support from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Spectrum, Mirati, Bristol Myers Squibb and Takeda; and licensing or royalties from Spectrum. E.J.S. is a paid consultant for Siren Biotechnology, an external advisory board member at Nature’s Toolbox (NTX) with stock options, and a scientific advisor for iOncologi, Inc. The Article discusses patented technologies related to RNA therapeutics from A.J.G., C.M., S.H.L, D.S., H.R.M.-G. and E.J.S. Some of these technologies are licensed or under option to license by iOncologi, Inc. H.R.M.-G. and E.J.S. receive royalty payments from patents licensed to iOncologi. The other authors declare no competing interests.