Corona protection for cancer patients: New vaccine CoVac1 from Tübingen shows great effect

Created: 04/21/2022, 15:47

By: Anna Lorenz

Tübingen researchers presented a new vaccine to protect against corona at the annual conference of the Californian Cancer Research Society.

The first studies have already brought promising results.

Tübingen – CoVac-1 is the name of the vaccine that researchers at the University of Tübingen are currently working on.

While feelings about a potential obligation to vaccinate in the context of the corona pandemic are slowly cooling down a little, the question of the extent to which certain population groups cannot benefit from the protective effect of the vaccine in the fight against Covid-19 despite vaccination remains as virulent as ever .

Previous investigations had shown that in the context of immune deficiencies, such as those that occur in particular due to chemotherapy or immunotherapy in cancer, there is often no adequate protective effect with regard to Covid-19 despite vaccination with Biontech, Moderna and the like.

CoVac-1: Novel vaccine from Tübingen is intended to protect cancer patients from corona in particular

The reason is that the current corona vaccines primarily take advantage of the mode of action of the B cells in the immune system.

According to this, the vaccination injects the blueprint for the spike protein, which covers the corona virus like spikes.

The body then reproduces this.

The so-called B cells then recognize this protein as not endogenous and form so-called antibodies.

However, if patients have an impaired immune system, for example because they are undergoing chemotherapy, only very few B cells are present.

Therefore, as a result of a vaccination, not enough antibodies can be formed to achieve the intended protection against corona.

reports, the researchers from Tübingen are therefore focusing

on the other defense system of the immune system when developing the CoVac-1 vaccine: the T cells.

"T cell-mediated immunity is essential for the development of a protective, antiviral response, and previous research has shown that T cells can fight Covid-19 even in the absence of neutralizing antibodies," says Claudia Tandler from the University of Tübingen at the Presentation of the first research results at the annual meeting of the California Cancer Research Society.

Corona vaccination for cancer: This is how the Tübingen vaccine CoVac-1 works

The T cells, which determine the specific immune reactions alongside the B cells, can be divided into several groups;

The cytotoxic T cells, which were also called “killer cells” in the past, are particularly important in the context of CoVac-1.

To put it simply, they recognize diseased body cells and trigger their cell death.

In addition, the new vaccine also makes use of the T-memory cells: These remember the reaction to the diseased body cell, so to speak, and store it for later, similar infections.

In addition to the spike protein known from mRNA vaccination, CoVac-1 contains five other peptides, i.e. protein components, of the coronavirus.

This should activate the T cells and learn to fight all of these peptides in the future.

Due to the range of proteins introduced, the vaccination should not only trigger a particularly large number of T cells and provoke a strong immune response, but also ensure that future mutations in the coronavirus, in which a protein component may have changed, are still recognized as invaders .

Corona vaccine for cancer: CoVac-1 from Tübingen brings promising results

"As far as we know, CoVac-1 is currently the only peptide-based vaccine candidate that is being developed and evaluated specifically for people with immunodeficiency," says Juliane Walz, who heads the team at the University Hospital in Tübingen.

And the prospects for the new vaccine are promising so far: In a small study with 14 patients, vaccination with CoVac-1 was able to record a clear T-cell reaction in 13 subjects.

This excellent result is now to be further investigated in a clinical study in order to enable immunocompromised people and people with B-cell defects, who ultimately need special protection against corona, to be given an effective vaccination in the future.

(askl)