The Science of Cancer and the Immune System
27 November - 13 mins
Podcast Series
Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill
This week, Professor Luke digs into one of the biggest questions in cancer research: how to train the immune system to hunt tumours. Immunotherapy already works in cancers like melanoma and lung cancer — but only 20–30% of patients respond.
A major new study in Nature Medicine may shift that. It tracked more than a thousand patients and found that people who’d had the Covid-19 vaccine responded twice as well to immunotherapy. Lung cancer patients lived an average 18 months longer; melanoma patients 14 months.
Why would a Covid vaccine help? The RNA technology gives the immune system a jolt, boosting interferons — the proteins Luke’s lab studies — which “wake up” tumours that normally hid...
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