Interview with Thomas Duchaine: a vaccine that fights COVID-19… and cancer!

D2R's funded-researcher Thomas Duchaine recently sat down with Radio-Canada to discuss emerging research suggesting that RNA vaccines developed for COVID-19 may also enhance the effectiveness of certain cancer treatments. 

A recent study by a group of American researchers working on personalized mRNA cancer vaccines found that COVID-19 vaccines can have beneficial effects for cancer patients undergoing immunotherapy. The researchers observed that COVID-19 vaccines broadly activate the immune system in mice. This led them to investigate whether a similar effect occurs in humans. 

Their findings suggest that this immune-stimulating effect does indeed translate to human patients. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine appears to act as an “alarm,” awakening immune cells within a patient’s tumor. Among patients receiving immunotherapy, vaccination was associated with significantly improved survival outcomes. These results indicate that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may enhance the immune response in certain cancers treated with immunotherapy, thereby improving the effectiveness of these treatments. 

This discovery adds to a growing body of promising research advancing cancer care and highlighting the potential of cancer vaccines as therapeutic tools. While immunotherapy itself marked a major breakthrough offering hope to many patients who previously had limited options, the continued development of cancer vaccines could open even more avenues for effective treatment. 

Hear more on this exciting discovery by watching the interview in French here