Protecting cancer patients from vaccine-preventable infections is an essential part of their management, and non-live vaccines are safe in patients receiving chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, as well as in transplant recipients. Nevertheless, the vaccine efficacy is usually reduced due to disease and treatment-related immunosuppression.(13) Moreover, in patients receiving immunotherapy in the form of ICIs, there is a theoretical concern about the triggering of irAEs by the vaccines, and data on the efficacy and safety of vaccinations against infectious agents in this population is scarce. The use of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 has further increased uncertainty about the efficacy of this new class of vaccines, as well as safety related to the emergence of irAEs.
Several studies have evaluated the use of mRNA vaccines in patients treated with ICIs, and the first results showed an efficacy of the BNT162b2 vaccine in cancer patients treated with ICIs comparable to that of the general population in terms of both humoral and cell immune responses, while irAE rates were low.(14–17)
In the present study, a very high seroconversion rate (97.3%) was found among patients with melanoma treated with ICIs. Although preliminary reports showed that neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were significantly lower in patients compared to matched healthy volunteers,(15) recent studies have reported comparably high (95.0%-97.0%) seroconversion rates among cancer patients treated with ICIs, significantly higher than those of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy or targeted therapy.(18, 19) Vaccine efficacy has been also studied for influenza vaccines and has been found to be higher in patients treated with ICIs in comparison to chemotherapy.(20, 21)
Moreover, no correlation of the seroconversion rate or the antibody titre was found with the age, the gender, the stage and the duration of the disease, or the number of previously administered treatment lines. A non-statistically significant trend for lower antibody titres in patients treated with corticosteroids for previously diagnosed irAEs was noted, but the number of patients on corticosteroids was small, thus, no solid conclusions can be drawn. It is very interesting that factors associated with low seroconversion rates and low antibody titres, such as older age, stage of the disease and the duration of treatment, in studies on cancer patients treated with other treatment types such as chemotherapy or monoclonal antibodies and targeted therapy,(19) did not seem to affect immunogenicity in patients treated with ICIs. It should be noted though, that these factors have not been thoroughly studied in patients treated with ICIs, since there is only a handful of studies available, and most of them are not focused on patients treated with ICIs. Nevertheless, since ICIs are considered non-immunosuppressive, these results are somewhat expected.
As regards to safety, AEs were generally mild and transient and occurred more frequently after the second dose of the vaccine. AEs were more prevalent in younger patients, patients with long-standing disease, and patients with a longer duration on immunotherapy. Correlation of the emergence of AEs with a younger age has been described in the past, although older adults tended to report more serious AEs. (22, 23) To the best of our knowledge, a higher prevalence of AEs in patients with long-standing disease or long duration of immunotherapy has not been reported, but it may reflect a more robust reaction of the immune system and cytokine production in patients with effectively activated T-cells.
The vaccine-related AE prevalence was not correlated with the immunogenicity of the vaccine either. It is well-known that the emergence of irAEs in cancer patients treated with ICIs is correlated with a favorable prognosis, possibly indicating a cross-reactivity between anti-tumor and anti-self immune reactions,(24) or a higher level of T-cell activation by the ICIs, possibly leading to more durable responses. Thus, although it has been shown that in hemato-oncological patients, vaccine-related AEs are more common in seroconverted patients after vaccination, (25) this was not confirmed by our results.
Whether the incidence rate of irAEs was increased after COVID-19 vaccines warrants further investigation. Some evidence for the safety profile of vaccination in cancer patients could be provided by studies examining the immunogenicity of influenza vaccination in patients receiving ICI therapy, which revealed comparable results with healthy individuals, while the risk for irAEs was unsubstantial (21, 26). Another study investigated influenza-specific immune responses, as well as the risk for irAEs after vaccination in lung cancer patients under PD1 blockade and concluded that humoral immune responses were similar between cancer patients and healthy controls, however the risk for development of irAEs was higher in patients under checkpoint inhibitor therapy. (27) A correlation of irAEs and vaccination could be attributed to the increased cytokine production after anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD1/PDL1 administration, as they both result in enhanced CD4 + and CD8 + T-cell activation, with subsequent release of cytokines such as TNF, IFNγ and IL-2 (28).
Finally, immunophenotyping of the T and myeloid cells failed to show any statistically significant differences before and after vaccination. A possible explanation could be that the vaccination itself cannot perturb the relations established in those populations by the use of ICIs. The single most important finding of a significantly higher MFI of PD1 on CD4+CD25+ cells before vaccination versus after vaccination is difficult to interpret and warrants further investigation. Although difficult to decipher this alteration, and the exact mechanism cannot be determined, we could suspect that it represents a stabilization mechanism that CD4+CD25+ T cells use in patients with melanoma; the PD1/PDL1 axis is used by regulatory T cells to suppress auto reactive B cells in vivo.(29) Thus, we can assume that this upregulation is the result of B cell activation and antibody production after vaccination, in order to suppress the development of autoreactive B cells.
The strengths of the present study are the well characterized and homogeneous population of patients with melanoma treated with ICIs and vaccinated with only one type of mRNA vaccine and the attempt to find possible effects of the vaccination on the subpopulations of T cells and myeloid cells. The main limitation of the study is the rather small number of participants and the fact that the almost complete response of the patients to the vaccine prevented any statistical analyses on factors affecting seroconversion. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this is the only available study so far providing focused results on the immunogenicity and safety of the BNT162b2 vaccine in patients with melanoma under ICI. Our results show that the BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is effective and safe in patients with melanoma treated with ICIs.