Scientists from the University of Florida and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have made an exciting discovery:
patients with advanced lung or skin cancer who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived significantly longer than those who didn’t get the vaccine. This finding could lead to big changes in how doctors treat cancer.
The research is based on more than 1,000 patient records from MD Anderson. Although more studies are needed to confirm the results, early signs suggest that the COVID-19 vaccine may boost the immune system in a way that helps fight cancer, not just viruses.
This idea has been developing for years. Dr. Elias Sayour, a pediatric cancer doctor at UF Health, has spent the past eight years studying how to use mRNA and lipid nanoparticles to wake up the immune system. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is a molecule that tells cells how to make proteins.
It’s the same technology used in COVID-19 vaccines. Sayour’s team previously found that you don’t have to target a specific cancer protein to fight tumors. Instead, you can just stimulate the immune system as if it were fighting off an i…
Based on that idea, the team wanted to know: could the COVID mRNA vaccine, already proven safe and widely used, have the same effect? To find out, they looked at patient data from 2019 to 2023. They found that cancer patients who got a COVID mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived much longer than those who did not.
In advanced lung cancer patients, those who got the vaccine had a median survival of 37.3 months, compared to 20.6 months for those who did not—a near doubling of survival time.
Among patients with metastatic melanoma, those who got the vaccine had improved survival as well—rising from 26.7 months to a range between 30 and 40 months. Some patients were still alive at the time the study ended, so the real benefit might be even greater.
Interestingly, vaccines like the flu shot or pneumonia vaccine, which are not mRNA-based, did not show the same effect. This suggests that the mRNA itself, not just the act of vaccination, plays an important role in improving survival.
The research team also tested this in mice. When they gave mice an mRNA COVID vaccine along with immunotherapy drugs, the immune system responded more strongly, and the tumors stopped growing.
The mRNA vaccine seemed to move immune cells from weak areas like tumors to stronger areas like lymph nodes, helping the body fight the cancer more effectively.
Dr. Sayour says this finding is groundbreaking. It shows that the mRNA vaccine acts like a flare, calling immune cells to action in a way that helps even hard-to-treat cancers respond to treatment. The next step is to run a large clinical trial with hospitals across multiple states to confirm these results in a real-world setting.
If the findings are confirmed, the possibilities are huge. Doctors could design a universal cancer vaccine based on mRNA technology that works for many types of cancer. Even a small increase in survival—5% or 10%—could mean more months or years for patients with advanced cancers. For many, that extra time could make a world of difference.
The study was presented at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin and has drawn attention from top scientists, including Dr. Jeff Coller of Johns Hopkins, who called it a major step in how mRNA medicines could change cancer care.
Dr. Duane Mitchell, who mentored one of the lead researchers, said the findings are strong enough to urgently move forward with further testing.
Although this was an observational study, and more research is needed to confirm the results, it opens the door to exciting new ways to help cancer patients live longer and better lives.
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