Adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in cancer patients

 Annika Fendler, Lewis Au, Laura Amanda Boos, Fiona Byrne, Scott Thomas Colville Shepherd, Ben Shum, Camille L Gerard, Barry Ward, Wenyi Xie, Maddalena Cerrone, Georgina H Cornish, Martin Pule, Leila Mekkaoui, Kevin Ng, Richard Stone, Camilla Gomes, Helen R Flynn, Ana Agua-Doce, Phillip Hobson, Simon Caidan, Mike Howell, Robert Goldstone, Mike Gavrielides, Emma Nye, Bram Snijders, James Macrae, Jerome Nicod, Adrian Hayday, Firza Gronthoud, Christina Messiou, David Cunningham, Ian Chau, Naureen Starling, Nicholas Turner, Jennifer Rusby, Liam Welsh, Nicholas van As, Robin Jones, Joanne Droney, Susana Banerjee, Kate Tatham, Shaman Jhanji, Mary O'Brien, Olivia Curtis, Kevin Harrington, Shreerang Bhide, Tim Slattery, Yasir Khan, Zayd Tippu, Isla Leslie, Spyridon Gennatas, Alicia Okines, Alison Reid, Kate Young, Andrew Furness, Lisa Pickering, Sonia Ghandi, Steve Gamblin, Charles Swanton, Emma Nicholson, Sacheen Kumar, Nadia Yousaf, Katalin Andrea Wilkinson, Anthony Swerdlow, Ruth Harvey, George Kassiotis, Robert Wilkinson, James Larkin, Samra Turajlic

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248608

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

PDF: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248608v1.full.pdf

Abstract

There is a pressing need to characterise the nature, extent and duration of immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in cancer patients and inform risk-reduction strategies and preserve cancer outcomes. CAPTURE is a prospective, longitudinal cohort study of cancer patients and healthcare workers (HCWs) integrating longitudinal immune profiling and clinical annotation. We evaluated 529 blood samples and 1051 oronasopharyngeal swabs from 144 cancer patients and 73 HCWs and correlated with >200 clinical variables. In patients with solid cancers and HCWs, S1-reactive and neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detectable five months post-infection. SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses were detected, and CD4+ T-cell responses correlated with S1 antibody levels. Patients with haematological malignancies had impaired but partially compensated immune responses. Overall, cancer stage, disease status, and therapies did not correlate with immune responses. These findings have implications for understanding individual risks and potential effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in the cancer population.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248608v1