Concurrent autologous adoptive T cells immunotherapy in active COVID-19 infected cancer patients for chemotherapy

Background The COVID-19 infection has comorbidity with impairment of T lymphocyte immune system which viciously coincides to promote cancer progression. The safety and necessaries roles of purposeful adoptive T cell immunotherapy for treating cancer patient with active COVID-19 infection have yet unknown. Methods In this cohort study patients admitted who demonstrated the similarity of infection severity were composed of stage IV cancer patients for scheduled adoptive cellular immune-therapeutic (ACT ), cancer patients without ACT and those sufferers without malignant tumors. The age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index (ACCI), determined for each patient, was used to compare the prognosis of the three groups. Results There were 123 patients (35 of ACT, 23 of non-ACT, 65 of non-cancer) with similar ACCI. There were little toxicities during the ACT even then concurrent with active COVID − 19 infection.Whereas the important findings that the cohort-level COVID-19 in-hospital case fatality rates were 0% (0/35), 52.2% (12/23) and 26.2% (17/65) respectively. Cancer patients receiving ACT had a shorter mean time to alleviation of symptoms (4.46 versus 16.88 and 17.90 days respectively) and had a lower severity incidence of symptoms (P = 0.0010) .CD3-CD16 ⁺ CD56 ⁺ NK cells increased following the ACT compared with the cancer patients( P  = 0.0017). Evidence based outcome identified that ACT significantly decreased the substantial case fatality rate among cancer patients with COVID-19. The time to symptom alleviation was significantly shorter in cancer patients treated with ACT than other patients. Conclusions These data suggest both the safety and therapeutic roles of ACT for cancer patients with COVID-19 infection status.The additional ACT during the infectious status could simultaneously leverage and reduce the risk of chemotherapy adverse outcome. Trial registration ACT cell transfusion patients in this study were approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Fudan University Pudong Medical Center, Shanghai, China, Ethics number: 2022-IIT-004-F01, and registered in ClinicalTrials.gov,ID: NCT05459441.