Safety and immunogenicity of one versus two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 for patients with cancer: interim analysis of a prospective observational study
Study (n=151) found poor efficacy of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccine in cancer patients (94%, 38% and 18% positive antibody titres for control, solid tumour and haematological cancer patients respectively after 1 dose of vaccine).
Source:
The Lancet Oncology
SPS commentary:
Authors note that immunogenicity increased significantly (to 95%) in patients with solid cancer within 2 weeks of a vaccine boost at day 21 after the first dose, and that this supports prioritisation of patients with cancer for an early (day 21) second dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine.
A related commentary discusses this research and concludes that prioritised, rapid COVID-19 vaccination of health-care workers and patients with cancer is essential to aid recovery of cancer care systems as they seek to mitigate the impact of delays and backlogs in diagnosis and treatment. However, this programme needs to go hand-in-hand with understanding the efficacy of different vaccines in very different cancer populations around the world. The scientific, societal, and policy impact of this information can only be valuable if we make a global effort to obtain homogeneous, high-quality data from diverse geographical and resource settings.