Vaccination protects against severe disease from COVID-19 in patients with B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Some patients even develop potent antibodies.
Patients with blood cancers often have weakened immune systems, so they are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19. In addition, some cancer therapies resulted in these patients developing no or very few antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination against COVID-19. However, there are not many in-depth analyzes of COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity.
Recently, a research team led by Dr. Andrea Keppler-hafkemeyer and Dr. Christine Greil of the University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany, and virologist Prof. Oliver T. Keppler of the University of Munich, has identified in detail the risk of hematological malignancies in patients who received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. immune response process.
The findings, published Dec. 21 in the journal Nature Cancer, suggest that vaccination is protective, preventing severe disease from SARS-CoV-2 in these patients.
T cell responses after COVID-19 vaccination
The study focused on patients with two types of blood cancers: B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Dr. Andrea Keppler-Hafkemeyer explains: "Our results show that almost all study participants developed a strong T-cell response after vaccination against COVID-19."
Dr Christine Greil added: "Even among study participants who were unable to develop any specific antibodies as a result of treatment after vaccination, breakthrough infections often turned out to be mild or moderately severe, and this may be one reason."
The research team led by Prof. Oliver T. Keppler analyzed not only the concentration of antibodies after vaccination, but also the quality of the antibodies. This mainly depends on the binding strength between the antibody and the virus spike protein. Furthermore, this is also reflected in the ability of antibodies to neutralize different SARS-CoV-2 variants in cell culture. They therefore compared the quantity and quality of antibodies produced and T cell responses to the spike protein produced by patients with hematological malignancies and healthy controls after two and three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
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High-quality antibodies against different SARS-CoV-2 variants
The study shows that once patients are able to form antibodies, they tend to produce antibodies of exceptional quality. After a second vaccination, they were already able to neutralize different SARS-CoV-2 variants and inactivate the virus. This capacity was more pronounced in patient cohorts than in vaccinated healthy populations.
“COVID-19 vaccination can generate very broad antiviral immunity, including highly potent neutralizing antibodies, in patients with various types of hematologic malignancies. Therefore, for patients with B-cell lymphoma or multiple myeloma, multiple vaccine doses without interrupting treatment," concludes Prof. Oliver T. Keppler.
