Source: University of Auckland (UoA)
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2026
The Covid-19 vaccine could transform cancer treatment and significantly increase patient survival rates, says University of Auckland Professor John Fraser.
US scientists published a groundbreaking paper last year, showing patients with lung cancer or melanoma were almost twice as likely to survive for three years when they had the Covid mRNA vaccine within 100 days of taking cancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Now Fraser is testing whether that study is borne out in a New Zealand context.
He has just launched research looking at outcomes for melanoma patients who received immune checkpoint inhibitors and had the Covid vaccine between August 2021 and March 2022. During this period of the pandemic, 95 percent of New Zealanders received the Covid mRNA vaccine.
“There was such intense controversy around the Covid vaccine, despite it being highly effective, so it would be wonderful if something good could come out of that difficult period,” says Fraser.
Public funding has been available since 2016 for immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) drugs for patients with metastatic and advanced melanoma in New Zealand.
Anonymised data about melanoma patients who received ICI but did not get the Covid vaccine will be compared with data for patients who received both. Results from the study are expected by the end of July next year.
ICI drugs work by activating the body’s immune system to fight cancer, while mRNA in vaccines guides cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response against disease.
Fraser, who specialises in immunology, says the mRNA molecules in the Covid vaccine are believed to sensitise the patient’s immune system, so it can better recognise tumours.
“I’m excited because the Covid vaccine wasn’t meant for treating cancer, it was meant for providing protection against the Covid virus.
“I’m interested in whether you can improve cancer survival even more by designing a different type of mRNA vaccine.
“Increasing the effectiveness might be as simple as administering the vaccine closer to the tumour, rather than in the arm muscle,” he says.
As soon as funding can be found, Fraser and his team plan to launch a clinical trial for people with lung cancer, testing a combination of the Covid mRNA vaccine and ICI drugs.
Māori have a 30 percent higher death rate from lung cancer than other New Zealanders, so they will have an important role in the trial, he says.
Currently, ICI only helps about 30 percent of patients with lung cancer or melanoma to survive for three years or more with no progression of their cancer.
If the clinical trial proves the vaccine improves survival rates for lung cancer patients, it could then be used to help people with other types of cancer, says Fraser.
“There’s new evidence emerging that mRNA helps the immune system fight many types of cancer, including cancers that wouldn’t usually be susceptible to immune checkpoint inhibitors.”
Fraser played a key role in establishing the New Zealand RNA Development Platform, because of the promise that harnessing RNA – or messenger ribonucleic acid – holds for developing new treatments for a range of health problems.
He is currently science advisor for the platform and is developing an mRNA vaccine against staphylococcus.
His interest in cancer immunotherapy stretches back to his postdoctoral research on T-cells in the 1980s at Harvard University. There he met Jim Allison, who was working in the same field and went on to win a Nobel Prize for discovering a new way to treat cancer – immune checkpoint inhibitors.
In 2015, Li Liangren Family Trust donated $10 million for cancer research at the University, and this fund provided $60,000 for Fraser’s study.
The research team includes Dr Laird Cameron, Dr Daisy Mak and Dr Gareth Rivalland from the University’s Department of Cancer Sciences, and University General Practice and Primary Healthcare researchers Dr Janine Paynter and Dr David Broderick.