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Cancer treatments may get a boost from mRNA COVID vaccines

Patients who got the vaccine within about 3 months of immunotherapy lived longer, data show

Three labeled COVID-19 vaccine syringes lie on a dark surface.

Cancer patients given an mRNA COVID vaccine within a few months of immunotherapy treatment fared better than unvaccinated patients.

Joe Raedle/Staff/Getty Images

By Meghan Rosen

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines might make some cancer treatments more effective.

Lung cancer patients who received the vaccine within a few months of immunotherapy, which revs up the immune system, lived nearly twice as long as unvaccinated patients, researchers report October 22 in Nature.