We may soon be able to administer a universal cancer vaccine. That’s what researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center propose after observing that patients with advanced lung or skin cancer who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine during immunotherapy lived significantly longer than those who did not.
Combined with more than a decade of research on using mRNA to awaken the immune system against tumors, the finding brings scientists closer to developing a universal cancer vaccine, an advance that could transform treatment and improve survival for patients with advanced disease.
The preliminary study, presented at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin, analyzed the records of more than 1,000 patients. A clinical trial now being designed will aim to confirm the results and further advance progress in cancer management.
“The implications are extraordinary — this could revolutionize the entire field of oncologic care,” said senior researcher Elias Sayour, pediatric oncologist at UF Health, in a press release.
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Testing Vaccines to Fight Cancer
A promising strategy in cancer treatment is to enlist the immune system itself. Many of today’s therapies work by training immune cells to recognize and destroy cancer, but in advanced stages, patients often respond poorly because their immune systems have been weakened by previous treatments.
Sayour’s lab has long sought ways to improve that response. In July 2025, his team reported that rather than targeting a specific tumor protein, they could provoke a strong antitumor reaction simply by boosting the immune system, much like fighting a viral infection, with a vaccine.
This experimental vaccine wasn’t specific to the coronavirus spike protein or any one cancer, but it used the same mRNA platform behind COVID-19 vaccines and produced a robust antitumor response in mice.
That discovery led researchers to wonder whether the COVID mRNA vaccine itself could have a similar effect in cancer patients.
COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Longer Survival
Next, the team analyzed data from patients with Stage 3 and 4 non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic melanoma treated between 2019 and 2023. They found that receiving a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of beginning immunotherapy was linked to significantly longer survival.
Among 180 lung cancer patients who received a COVID vaccine, median survival nearly doubled (from 20.6 months to 37.3 months) compared with 704 unvaccinated patients. For metastatic melanoma, those who received the vaccine lived a median of 30 to 40 months versus 26.7 months in unvaccinated patients, with some still alive at data cutoff. In contrast, patients who received non-mRNA pneumonia or flu vaccines saw no change in longevity.
“Although not yet proven to be causal, this is the type of treatment benefit that we strive for and hope to see with therapeutic interventions — but rarely do,” said Duane Mitchell, director of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
To add weight to their findings, UF researchers tested the concept in mice, pairing immunotherapy drugs with an mRNA vaccine targeting the coronavirus spike protein. The combination stopped tumor growth.
Toward a Universal Cancer Vaccine
“We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilize and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients,” said Sayour.
Next, Sayour and colleagues plan a large clinical trial to confirm their findings. If the results hold, the work could usher in a new era of combination cancer therapies and move the field closer to the long-sought promise of a universal cancer vaccine.
“The results from this study demonstrate how powerful mRNA medicines truly are and that they are revolutionizing our treatment of cancer,” said Jeff Coller, a leading mRNA scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
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