In nature 22 October 2025 (thanks to Mike C.)
Melanoma cells (artificially coloured). An immune-based therapy was more effective against this cancer in people who received an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine within 100 days of the start of their cancer treatment.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL
A vaccine that helps to fight cancer might already exist. People being treated for certain deadly cancers lived longer if they had received an mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19 than if they hadn’t, finds an analysis of medical records.
Follow-up experiments in mice show that the vaccines have this apparent life-extending effect not because they protect against COVID-19 but because they rev up the body’s immune system1. That response increases the effectiveness of therapies called checkpoint inhibitors, the animal data suggest.
“The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine acts like a siren and activates the immune system throughout the entire body”, including inside the tumour, where it “starts programming a response to kill the cancer”, says Adam Grippin, a radiation oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, an co-author of the report published today in Nature. “We were amazed at the results in our patients.”
The findings, which Grippin and his colleagues hope to validate in a clinical trial, suggest further hidden capabilities of mRNA vaccines, even as the administration of US President Donald Trump has slashed about US$500 million in funding for research investigating the technology.
The US Department of Health and Human Services, which cancelled the funding for mRNA research, did not respond to a request for comment.