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EHA 2025 | The development of an MVA-based vaccine to prevent complications of infections in patients with CLL
Alexey Danilov, MD, PhD, City of Hope, Duarte, CA, comments on the development of an MVA-based vaccine to prevent complications of viral infections in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). He discusses a study that compared this vaccine with an mRNA-based vaccine, showing that only the MVA-based vaccine induced a substantial, meaningful T-cell immune response. This interview took place at the 30th Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) in Milan, Italy.
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Transcript
Patients with CLL are at risk for infections. They are at risk for viral, bacterial, and fungal infections, and unfortunately, that comes with the territory of CLL. And as you know, patients with CLL were disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic. They were at high risk of developing complications, clinical sequelae of COVID, as well as risk of death. And luckily, the COVID pandemic is over; however, COVID as an infection still continues and periodically shows its ugly face...
Patients with CLL are at risk for infections. They are at risk for viral, bacterial, and fungal infections, and unfortunately, that comes with the territory of CLL. And as you know, patients with CLL were disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic. They were at high risk of developing complications, clinical sequelae of COVID, as well as risk of death. And luckily, the COVID pandemic is over; however, COVID as an infection still continues and periodically shows its ugly face. So it is important to still optimize prevention of complications of viral infections such as COVID in immunocompromised patients, which CLL patients are. So at City of Hope, we designed a vaccine that was based on vaccinia virus. So it’s not an mRNA-based vaccine; it’s a protein DNA-based vaccine. And we designed a study where we randomized patients who previously received an initial series of mRNA-based vaccines to either a control Pfizer vaccine of the time, which was one of the boosters available at the time that the study was ongoing, or the MVA-based vaccine. An important feature of our vaccine is also that it’s designed against the nuclear capsid and spike antigen. So it covers the nuclear capsid antigen, which is less likely or very unlikely to actually undergo mutations. So what we found briefly in this randomized portion of the study is that both vaccines induced an antibody response, but only the City of Hope Geovax vaccine, the MVA vaccine, induced a substantial, meaningful T-cell immune response. And T-cell immune response is a very important part of defense against viral infections and other infections. So at this time, we ended up closing the control, the Pfizer part of the study, because of the success of the experimental arm per the recommendation from our data and safety monitoring committee. And we are enrolling on the MVA experimental part, the experimental vaccine, patients with CLL. So I hope to share additional data at future meetings.
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