Vaccination protects blood cancer patients against severe SARS-CoV2 disease

People with blood cancer often have weakened immune systems, which put them at higher risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. Additionally, some cancer therapies cause these patients to form little or no antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination against COVID-19. However, vaccination can also activate what is called T cellsresponsible in particular for the long-term immune response.

A team led by physicians Dr Andrea Keppler-Hafkemeyer and Dr Christine Greil from the University of Friborg Medical Center and virologist Prof. Oliver T. Keppler of LMU Munich has now characterized in detail the evolution over several months of the immune response of blood cancer patients who had received a total of three vaccinations against COVID-19. The results allow conclusions to be drawn about the protection that vaccination confers on these patients against severe SARS-CoV2 disease.

Strong T cell response to COVID-19 vaccination

The study involved patients with two types of blood cancer: B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

Our results show that almost all study participants had a strong T-cell response to the COVID-19 vaccination.”

Dr. Andrea Keppler-Hafkemeyer, Medical Center University of Friborg

“This may be one of the reasons why breakthrough infections were found to be mild to moderately severe, even in study participants who had been unable to form specific antibodies after vaccination due to their treatment.” , adds Dr. Christine Greil. The co-principal investigators and the principal authors regularly care for patients with blood cancer in the Department of Medicine I of the Medical Center of the University of Freiburg.

The research group led by Prof. Oliver T. Keppler specializes not only in analyzing the concentration of antibodies after vaccination, but also in their quality. This depends in particular on the strength of the bonds between the antibodies and the viral spike protein. Additionally, the ability of antibodies to neutralize different variants of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures plays a major role. In the next step, the scientists therefore compared the quantity and quality of antibody and T-cell responses to the spike protein in blood cancer patients and healthy study participants after two and three vaccinations against COVID-19.

High quality antibodies against different variants of SARS-CoV-2

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

“COVID-19 vaccination can generate very broad – including very potent – antiviral immunity neutralizing antibodies – in patients with various types of blood cancer. Therefore, multiple doses of vaccine can be recommended for patients with B-cell lymphoma or multiple myeloma without interrupting treatment,” summarizes Prof. Oliver T. Keppler.