00:00This is Apropos. The most widely used COVID vaccines may offer an unexpected benefit for
00:08some cancer patients, boosting their immune systems to help fight tumours. Preliminary
00:14research published in the journal Nature suggests that people with advanced lung or skin cancer who
00:20were taking certain immunotherapy drugs lived substantially longer if they'd received a Pfizer
00:26or Moderna shot within 100 days of starting their treatment. With the details, here's Monty Francis.
00:34During the pandemic, they were credited with saving millions of lives. Now, researchers say
00:39they found that mRNA COVID vaccines had an additional surprise benefit for some cancer
00:45patients. What we found is that COVID mRNA vaccines act like a siren to activate the immune system
00:51throughout the body. The study involved 1,000 patients at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas
00:57with advanced lung cancer or melanoma who were within 100 days of receiving approved immunotherapy
01:03drugs. Lung cancer patients who received a Pfizer or Moderna mRNA COVID vaccine survived for about 37
01:10months or almost twice as long as those who didn't receive the shot. Researchers say it appears the
01:16vaccine helps supercharge the patient's immune systems to fight against their cancerous tumors.
01:21The COVID mRNA vaccine can reprogram immune systems to kill cancer in a way that allows immune
01:27therapy to work more effectively. The study also found that those who didn't respond well to
01:32immunotherapy had a five-fold improvement in overall survival. The findings are raising hope for a day
01:38when vaccines will be used to treat a range of cancers but come at a difficult time for research
01:44into mRNA vaccines. Back in August, the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the
01:50American government was canceling $500 million in mRNA development, claiming contrary to the
01:57scientific findings, that they failed to protect against respiratory infections like COVID and the
02:02flu. The findings related to cancer are preliminary and researchers are already planning a phase three
02:08clinical trial and hope to start enrolling patients by the end of the year.
02:12Well, for more, we're joined now by one of the researchers working on these next revolution
02:18treatments, Cristiano Marconi, PhD candidate in immunotherapy at the University of Florida. Thanks so much for
02:25being with us on the program this evening, Cristiano. So just tell us, how exactly does this work? Are these
02:32vaccines essentially reprogramming the immune system?
02:36First of all, thank you so much for having me. Yes, in a way it is, if anything else, for a short term.
02:49But when you have cancer, what it really does is it puts your body on alarm. And when your body goes on
02:55alarm, it looks for a threat. And what it finds is that cancer appears to it as a threat. And this is just
03:02what you need to break through. When you have cancer, it tends to trick your immune system
03:11to make it think that it's not a threat. But when you get the vaccine, it then alerts it that there is
03:17something actually there.
03:20And how exactly then does the molecule that powers these vaccines actually help the immune system to
03:27respond better to treatment? Maybe just tell us a little bit about what exactly messenger RNA actually is.
03:34It's something that's found in all of our cells.
03:37Yes. So it's something that exactly like you said, it's found in all of our cells. So we all have a genetic
03:43sequence. We all know about DNA. But DNA is really just the master code of the cell. It doesn't really make anything
03:51itself. It's like the library. RNA is basically just a copy. So you take a book out of that library.
03:58And then from that RNA, you then make proteins, which do all the stuff of the cell. So basically,
04:05the protein is when you read off of that page, you transfer the knowledge. So that's really what RNA is.
04:11It's that intermediate step. It takes it from the library and brings it to where it can be used.
04:15And how exactly did you and your fellow researchers make this particular discovery?
04:24So our lab has been studying mRNA vaccines for a while, even prior to the pandemic.
04:33But really what it started with actually, so earlier this year, we published another paper showing that
04:38nonspecific vaccines that we discovered when we were looking at making cancer vaccines can actually
04:43sensitize some tumors to immune checkpoint inhibitors, one of the immunotherapies that we're studying in
04:49the paper. So that's really what led to this discovery, where we asked, okay, so these vaccines
04:55that we designed for cancer work, what about the commercially available COVID vaccines?
05:01How much of a game changer do you believe this is for cancer patients?
05:06I believe this has the potential to be a really big game changer because you could potentially have a
05:16therapy that is available on the shelf that can be administered to any patient that gets diagnosed
05:22with cancer. So we still want to run a phase three clinical trial to really confirm these results
05:28because the implication is massive, but it gives us the power to give an immediate boost to an already
05:35effective treatment that could cure a lot of patients.
05:39And do they, does your research suggest that this would only work on patients who are in the more
05:44advanced stages of the illness, or is it something that potentially could help all cancer patients?
05:53So it could potentially help any cancer patients that would be eligible to receive immune
06:00checkpoint inhibitors. Generally, when it comes to cancer, surgery is still the best option. If you can
06:06cut out the cancer, that is the best option. But unfortunately, sometimes you don't get all the
06:11cancer. Sometimes it progresses. And based on what the clinician recommends, if you could get immune
06:18checkpoint inhibitors, the vaccine could potentially improve that. Again, we need to confirm it in a
06:24clinical trial, but this is what the findings have led us to believe right now.
06:27And a little more broadly, perhaps, how has immunotherapy more generally helped to revolutionize
06:33cancer treatment, particularly for those who might have been considered incurable?
06:40It's been massive for the field. So immunotherapy is one of the few therapies that can truly cure a
06:47patient. So it does have the limitation where some patients just will not respond at all. And we don't
06:54always know why that is, but the patients that do respond can completely benefit from it and can
06:58actually cure their disease, whereas before you were just hoping to extend their survival. So that's
07:04really the power of immunotherapy is that you can really wipe out the disease.
07:09And are you concerned at all about, you know, vaccines? They're a bit of a hot topic,
07:13particularly in the U.S. at the moment, the health secretary, you know, the kind of
07:18cuts to funding also, you know, this is coming at a very particular moment, isn't it, in the United
07:25States?
07:27It is. So I'm a PhD student, and we are definitely, we've had this fear and concern about losing
07:36funding. Nothing has happened yet. It's all blown over so far. And we're very grateful. And this is,
07:43in our line of work, we are studying cancer, which I really hope that at least the funding agencies
07:48can see that this is a very serious disease. We need to have all the tools available to us
07:53to treat them. We can't hold back. We can't be afraid. We need to throw everything we can,
07:59because cancer will kill you if you do not treat it.
08:02And do you think that discoveries like this, you know, and people hearing more about what vaccines can
08:06actually do, that will also help to fight that kind of skepticism within a certain audience in the
08:13United States?
08:16It may. I hope that we could at least build a little bit more trust. But again, this is,
08:24we're really studying this in patients that really don't have much of a resort. So I don't really know
08:30that this applies to a lot of the general population. I would really hope that this could,
08:36you know, change their perspective. But I really don't know. I hope so. But
08:40And this, this kind of therapy, this immunotherapy, the research that you're working on,
08:46could it be modified to help fight other diseases? Or is this something very specific to cancer?
08:54We, our lab has done a little bit of work looking at autoimmune diseases, which is actually
08:59interesting, because the complete other side of the spectrum, where you want to deactivate the
09:04immune system. And we think that if you deliver it in a way, a specific way, it can actually cause
09:11tolerance. This is, this is still very preliminary work. We're still working on it. But there is a
09:16potential that we could deliver in this manner as well.
09:19And when you speak about further clinical trials, what exactly will be involved there?
09:23So clinical trials for using the COVID vaccine with immune checkpoint inhibitors, this would be a
09:33multi-institutional phase three clinical trial for non-small cell lung cancer, stage four, I believe.
09:40This will be predominantly ran by our collaborators at MD Anderson and then my mentor, Elias Sayer.
09:45But yeah, what this will be is a fully randomized clinical trial where we can really get a very
09:51solid answer on whether or not these are truly boosting the effect of immunotherapy.
09:57Right now, all of our data is retrospective, which is great. We've seen a great trend, but
10:02there's always limitations to this and there's no way around them. So really, this is the only way to
10:06move forward.
10:07And if you can move forward and if these trials go well, how soon do you think patients could actually
10:13have access to this kind of treatment?
10:16I mean, so receiving immunotherapy is completely based on what your clinician recommends.
10:24If you're a cancer patient, you have people, they recommend certain types of treatment,
10:29the ones that they think you will best respond to. And the COVID vaccine is commercially available.
10:34You can go to any pharmacy and get it. So yeah, we could develop this platform further and make it
10:41more effective. But as of right now, this is completely up to the patient. If they want to
10:46give it a shot, they can give it a shot.
10:49Okay. Well, thank you so much, Cristiano, for being with us on the program this evening and for
10:53explaining all of that to us. That is Cristiano Marconi, a researcher at the University of Florida.
11:00Thanks so much. Well, that's it from us.
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