Page 176 - Haematologica May 2022

Letters to the Editor
CD8 T cells across all variants in this group of patients compared to those vaccinated with BNT162b2 vaccine (Figure 2Di&ii). These data are compelling and warrant further investigation with one hypothesis being the ChAdOx1 vector reveals an innate weakness in this patient group inducing a hyper-stimulated but poorly efficacious effector T-cell response.
In totality, although ChAdOx1-treated MDS patients do mount both humoral and cellular immune responses, they are weak in comparison to BNT162b2. The overall serological responses in the MDS cohorts were 100% for those who had completed the two-dose BNT162b2 vac- cine schedule compared to 76.2% of patients vaccinated with the ChAdOx1 vaccine. As such, it may be pertinent to advise the clinical community to administer MDS patients with an mRNA-based vaccine to promote enhanced immunity. Finally, we observed that neutraliza- tion in seroconverted patients was significantly weaker for both the ChAdOx-1 and BNT162b2 MDS cohorts compared to HV, highlighting the potential benefit of a third primary dose for this clinically vulnerable patient group, in addition to subsequent booster doses.
Sultan Abdul-Jawad,1* Richard Beatson,1* Thomas Lechmere,2* Rosalind Graham,1 Thanussuyah Alaguthurai,1,3 Carl Graham,2 Jennifer Vidler,4 Austin Kulasekararaj,4 Piers EM Patten,1,4 Katie J Doores2 and Sheeba Irshad1,3,5,6
1Comprehensive Cancer Center, School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences, King's College London; 2Department of Infectious Diseases, School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences, King’s College London; 3Breast Cancer Now Research Unit, King’s College London; 4Department of Hematological Medicine, King’s College Hospital;5Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; 6Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Clinician Scientist, London, UK
*SAJ, RB and TL contributed equally as co-first authors Correspondence:
SHEEBA IRSHAD - sheeba.irshad@kcl.ac.uk doi:10.3324/haematol.2021.280337
Received: November 15, 2021.
Accepted: January 10, 2022. Pre-published: January 20, 2022. Disclosures: no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Contributions: AK, PP, SI and KD developed the concept and study design; SAJ, RB, TA, RG and TL perfomed the investigation; TA, JV
and AK recruited patients; TA, AK and JV searched the clinical data- base; SAJ and RB performed formal analysis; SAJ, RB and RG curat- ed data; SAJ, RB, SI and KD visualized the research; SI wrote the original draft of the manuscript; RB, AK, PP, KD wrote, reviewed and edited the paper; SI, AK and PP acquired funding; SI and KD super- vised the research.
Acknowledgements: we thank patients and blood donors consenting in this. We thank members of the King’s College Hospital (KCH) trial teams who contributed to patient recruitment for the SOAP study at KCH hospitals.
Funding: the SOAP study (IRAS 282337) is sponsored by King’s College London and GSTT Foundation NHS Trust. It is funded from grants from the KCL Charity funds to SI (PS10822), Cancer Research UK to S.I. (C56773/ A24869). This work was supported by Blood Cancer UK awarded to SI, AK and PP and the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Award to SI and PP (6631-21).
Data sharing statement: data from this study can be made avail- able to other researchers in the field upon request and approval by the study management committee and subject to appropriate data transfer agreements. Requests should be directed to Dr Irshad.
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