COVID-19 Vaccine for Blood Cancer: Effective or Not

The course over several months of the immune response of blood cancer patients who had received COVID-19 vaccinations was recorded by a team led by physicians from the Medical Center-University of Freiburgand and LMU Munich. The findings were published in Cell Reports Medicine. People with blood cancer usually have a weak immune system which puts them at higher risk of becoming very ill from COVID-19. Furthermore, several cancer treatments cause these individuals to develop little or no antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 after COVID-19 vaccination.

However, on the other hand, the study shows that vaccination can activate T cells which are responsible for long-term immune response. The results allow inferences to be made about the protection that vaccination gives these patients against serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

Strong T Cell Response to COVID-19 Vaccination

The study was focused on patients with two kinds of blood cancer: B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma and it showed almost all study participants had a strong T cell response to COVID-19 vaccination.

This could be one reason why breakthrough infections turned out to be mild to moderately severe even in study participants who had been unable to form any specific antibodies after vaccination because of their therapy.

This depends particularly on the strength of the bonds between antibodies and the viral spike protein. In addition, the ability of antibodies to neutralize different SARS-CoV-2 variants in cell cultures plays a major role.

As the next step, therefore, they compared the quantity and quality of antibodies and T cell responses to the spike protein among blood cancer patients and healthy study participants after two and three COVID-19 vaccinations.

High-Quality Antibodies Against Different COVID-19 Variants

The study further revealed that patients who can form antibodies tend to produce antibodies of particularly high quality. After their second vaccination, they are already able to neutralize and thus deactivate different SARS-CoV-2 variants. This ability is considerably more pronounced in this patient cohort than in vaccinated healthy people.

COVID-19 vaccination can generate very broad antiviral immunity -- including highly potent neutralizing antibodies -- in patients with various types of blood cancer. Consequently, multiple vaccine doses can be recommended for patients with B-cell lymphoma or multiple myeloma without interrupting therapy.

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Source-Eurekalert