The discovery is considered "extraordinary," as experts say it's helping some individuals live longer "by a significant amount."
In a February 2025 report, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the 2024-2025 Covid-19 vaccine prevented an estimated 68,000 hospitalizations during peak respiratory illness season. But a groundbreaking new study from the University of Florida and MD Anderson Cancer Center just revealed another layer to the benefits of this vaccine: there’s a surprising and potentially transformative link between Covid-19 vaccines and improved cancer survival rates.
From the study, published this month in the Nature journal, researchers found that individuals with advanced lung and skin cancers who received a Covid-19 vaccine within 100 days before starting immunotherapy lived “dramatically longer” lives than those who did not. According to University of Florida representatives, the preliminarily findings mark “a significant step toward a long-awaited universal cancer vaccine to boost the tumor-fighting effects of immunotherapy.”
While the results may seem like an overnight breakthrough, the study is actually the product of over a decade of work. For 12 years, the team has been developing personalized mRNA cancer vaccines—therapies designed to train a patient’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.
Yet, what came as an “absolutely fascinating discovery” was that even non-specific mRNA—such as that found in Covid-19 vaccines—can effectively activate the immune system to recognize and fight cancer, according to Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, co-senior author of the study and a University of Florida Health pediatric oncologist. “Even if the mRNA is completely non-specific to the patient’s cancer, that mRNA could wake up the sleeping giant that is the immune system,” Sayour explained in a video posted to the university’s site.
The analysis, presented on October 19 at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin, Germany, looked at the treatment plans and survival outcomes of 1,000 cancer patients at MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is located in Texas. The team found that “patients with some of the most aggressive forms of skin and lung cancer had a near doubling in survival outcome,” Dr. Sayour says.
Once the researchers validate their findings with a randomized clinical trial, they’ll re-aim their focus back to product development: “We could design an even better nonspecific vaccine to mobilize and reset the immune response, in a way that could essentially be a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine for all cancer patients,” says Dr. Sayour.
The hopeful news comes just months after an August 2025 announcement that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) canceled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research and development. “This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I’ve seen in my 50 years in this business,” Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR at the time. “It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths.”
Still, the team behind the new study says they’re optimistic about the future of mRNA vaccines as a tool for cancer care, with one University of Florida cancer researcher calling it “one of the most exciting observations I have seen in my 20-year career.”
Anyone wondering about their current Covid vaccine eligibility should speak with their doctor or healthcare provider to make a personalized vaccination plan.
For daily wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
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