Study of efficacy and longevity of immune response to 3rd and 4th doses of COVID-19 vaccines in patients with cancer: a single arm clinical trial
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine, United States
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
- Montefiore Medical Center, United States
- Euroimmun, United States
Abstract
Background: Cancer patients show increased morbidity with COVID-19 and need effective immunization strategies. Many healthcare regulatory agencies recommend administering 'booster' doses of COVID-19 vaccines beyond the standard 2-dose series, for this group of patients. Therefore, studying the efficacy of these additional vaccine doses against SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern is of utmost importance in this immunocompromised patient population.
Methods: We conducted a prospective single arm clinical trial enrolling patients with cancer that had received two doses of mRNA or one dose of AD26.CoV2.S vaccine and administered a 3rd dose of mRNA vaccine. We further enrolled patients that had no or low responses to three mRNA COVID vaccines and assessed the efficacy of a 4th dose of mRNA vaccine. Efficacy was assessed by changes in anti-spike antibody, T-cell activity and neutralization activity were again assessed at baseline and 4 weeks.
Results: We demonstrate that a 3rd dose of COVID-19 vaccine leads to seroconversion in 57% of patients that were seronegative after primary vaccination series. The immune response is durable as assessed by anti-S antibody titers, T-cell activity and neutralization activity against wild-type SARS-CoV2 and BA1.1.529 at 6 months of follow up. A subset of severely immunocompromised hematologic malignancy patients that were unable to mount an adequate immune response (titer <1000 AU/mL) after the 3rd dose and were treated with a 4th dose in a prospective clinical trial which led to adequate immune-boost in 67% of patients. Low baseline IgM levels and CD19 counts were associated with inadequate seroconversion. Booster doses induced limited neutralization activity against the Omicron variant.
Conclusions: These results indicate that 3rd dose of COVID vaccine induces durable immunity in cancer patients and an additional dose can further stimulate immunity in a subset of patients with inadequate response.
Funding: Leukemia lymphoma society, National Cancer Institute.
Clinical trial identifier: NCT05016622.
Data availability
The data for this clinical trial contains protected health information for the participants that includes a large amount of information as to specific dates/treatments/cancer diagnoses. Therefore, it is prudent to protect this information and it does not seem appropriate to put the information out in the public domain. For example- patients' specific cancer diagnoses, treatment received, COVID-19 vaccine dates can be viewed as sensitive information in the aggregate. If we remove this detailed information from the dataset then the dataset would end up being very limited and not useful for any researcher. Therefore, we believe that making the dataset available through the corresponding author based on individual well-supported requests will allow researchers access to complete data while protecting potentially identifiable patient-level information from the public domain. We are more than happy to share the deidentified database with the reviewers/editors (for review purposes only). If an interested researcher wishes to acquire the data, the aforementioned de-identified dataset can be made available by contacting the corresponding author of the study. While there are no restrictions on data usage per se, we request that future research be done in accordance with standardized guidelines and with local ethics approval. The code is already deposited in GitHubCode availability statement : Computer code has been deposited in GitHub and can be found at https://github.com/kith-pradhan/CovidBooster and https://github.com/kith-pradhan/CovidBooster4th
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Cancer Institute (3P30CA013330-49S3)
- Balazs Halmos
NCI Community Oncology outreach program (2UG1CA189859-06)
- Balazs Halmos
leukemia lymphoma society
- Amit K Verma
Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (HHSN272201400008C)
- Florian Krammer
Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (75N93021C00014)
- Florian Krammer
Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (75N93019C00051)
- Florian Krammer
National Cancer Institute (75N91019D00024)
- Florian Krammer
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Ethics statement:The study was approved by Montefiore-Einstein institutional review board (IRB# 2021-13204). Participants were recruited after referral to the study from their treating oncologists. At the consent visit, patients were provided with a study overview including initial lab draw, vaccine appointment and follow-up at pre-specified time points. The informed consent document included consent for research samples and consent to protect confidential patient information by the personnel approved under the IRB. Any person not involved with the research study did not have access to patient identifying data. De-identified data was allowed to be shared with collaborators and findings from the study be published. The informed consent document also included consent for a future research lab draw should an improved test for SARS-CoV-2 immunity became available. Finally, the consent included patient's right to withdraw from the study at any time. The patient was provided with a copy of the signed informed consent.
Copyright
© 2023, Thakkar et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Study of efficacy and longevity of immune response to 3rd and 4th doses of COVID-19 vaccines in patients with cancer: a single arm clinical trial
eLife 12:e83694.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.83694
Further reading
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- Medicine
Background:
Post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) pancreatitis (PEP) is a severe and deadly adverse event following ERCP. The ideal method for predicting PEP risk before ERCP has yet to be identified. We aimed to establish a simple PEP risk score model (SuPER model: Support for PEP Reduction) that can be applied before ERCP.
Methods:
This multicenter study enrolled 2074 patients who underwent ERCP. Among them, 1037 patients each were randomly assigned to the development and validation cohorts. In the development cohort, the risk score model for predicting PEP was established via logistic regression analysis. In the validation cohort, the performance of the model was assessed.
Results:
In the development cohort, five PEP risk factors that could be identified before ERCP were extracted and assigned weights according to their respective regression coefficients: –2 points for pancreatic calcification, 1 point for female sex, and 2 points for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm, a native papilla of Vater, or the pancreatic duct procedures (treated as ‘planned pancreatic duct procedures’ for calculating the score before ERCP). The PEP occurrence rate was 0% among low-risk patients (≤0 points), 5.5% among moderate-risk patients (1–3 points), and 20.2% among high-risk patients (4–7 points). In the validation cohort, the C statistic of the risk score model was 0.71 (95% CI 0.64–0.78), which was considered acceptable. The PEP risk classification (low, moderate, and high) was a significant predictive factor for PEP that was independent of intraprocedural PEP risk factors (precut sphincterotomy and inadvertent pancreatic duct cannulation) (OR 4.2, 95% CI 2.8–6.3; p<0.01).
Conclusions:
The PEP risk score allows an estimation of the risk of PEP prior to ERCP, regardless of whether the patient has undergone pancreatic duct procedures. This simple risk model, consisting of only five items, may aid in predicting and explaining the risk of PEP before ERCP and in preventing PEP by allowing selection of the appropriate expert endoscopist and useful PEP prophylaxes.
Funding:
No external funding was received for this work.
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- Medicine
Estrogen significantly impacts women’s health, and postmenopausal hypertension is a common issue characterized by blood pressure fluctuations. Current control strategies for this condition are limited in efficacy, necessitating further research into the underlying mechanisms. Although metabolomics has been applied to study various diseases, its use in understanding postmenopausal hypertension is scarce. Therefore, an ovariectomized rat model was used to simulate postmenopausal conditions. Estrogen levels, blood pressure, and aortic tissue metabolomics were analyzed. Animal models were divided into Sham, OVX, and OVX +E groups. Serum estrogen levels, blood pressure measurements, and aortic tissue metabolomics analyses were performed using radioimmunoassay, UHPLC-Q-TOF, and bioinformatics techniques. Based on the above research content, we successfully established a correlation between low estrogen levels and postmenopausal hypertension in rats. Notable differences in blood pressure parameters and aortic tissue metabolites were observed across the experimental groups. Specifically, metabolites that were differentially expressed, particularly L-alpha-aminobutyric acid (L-AABA), showed potential as a biomarker for postmenopausal hypertension, potentially exerting a protective function through macrophage activation and vascular remodeling. Enrichment analysis revealed alterations in sugar metabolism pathways, such as the Warburg effect and glycolysis, indicating their involvement in postmenopausal hypertension. Overall, this current research provides insights into the metabolic changes associated with postmenopausal hypertension, highlighting the role of L-AABA and sugar metabolism reprogramming in aortic tissue. The findings suggest a potential link between low estrogen levels, macrophage function, and vascular remodeling in the pathogenesis of postmenopausal hypertension. Further investigations are needed to validate these findings and explore their clinical implications for postmenopausal women.
