A retrospective analysis of real-world data is reassuring about the efficacy and safety of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for patients with hematologic cancers on CAR-T therapy.
There have been concerns about whether vaccines work well in patients who have received CAR-T therapy and whether vaccination would increase the risk of cytokine release syndrome or other immune-related toxicities in this vulnerable population.
The study, which is being presented at the ASCO 2026 meeting, evaluated patient data via TriNetX, a global health research company.
Jowan Al-Nusair, MD, of Marshall University, and colleagues identified 3,199 patients with hematologic malignancies and who had received CAR-T therapy. Of these, 222 had also received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Then they used propensity scoring to match the data by age, sex, race, staging, and comorbidities and wound up with two cohorts with 218 patients each to evaluate in the study.
The all cause 3-year mortality rate was 39% lower for the cohort that got the mRNA vaccines (P=0.01). Researchers reported that the rate of Grade 1/2 cytokine CRS was higher in vaccinated patients (P=0.03), but they didn’t have enough cases of Grade 3/4 events for the comparison. No significant difference was seen in immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome between the two cohorts.
Reference
Al-Nusaid J, Elchouemi M, Eysha M, et al. Impact of mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on CAR T-cell therapy outcomes in hematologic malignancies: a multi-center real-world analysis. Abstract #11001. Presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting; May 29-June 2, 2026; Chicago.
Leave feedback about this