{"doi":"10.1016/j.ijid.2025.108252","title":"Cancer and COVID-19: A review of immune insights and partnerships to inform public health strategy","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: To summarize current evidence on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine immunogenicity in cancer populations, review the experimental approaches and assays used to evaluate multilayer immunity, and highlight emerging collaborative efforts that support more standardized and comprehensive immune profiling. METHODS: We reviewed published clinical and immunological studies assessing vaccine-induced humoral, cellular, and mucosal immunity in hematologic and solid cancer populations, with attention to experimental approaches, assay standardization, and factors contributing to variability in immune readouts. RESULTS: Cancer populations are highly vulnerable to respiratory viral infections (RVIs) due to disease- and treatment-related immunosuppression. SARS-CoV-2 is a particularly severe threat in this population and COVID-19 is associated with higher rates of hospitalization and mortality compared to immunocompetent individuals. Vaccination remains the most effective preventive method. However, immune responses to vaccination in cancer patients are often heterogeneous and weaker than in healthy populations. While booster doses can improve the protection, vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, and some patients may not respond well, with significant variability across cancer types, cancer status and treatment regimens. These observations highlight the importance of more personalized vaccination strategies informed by a thorough understanding of immune correlates of protection, including humoral, cellular, and mucosal immunity. Assessing different layers of immunity requires different experimental approaches, robust assay standardization and data harmonization. The collaborative efforts of consortia and the development of large, well-annotated biospecimen repositories can support high-resolution immune profiling, advance next-generation vaccine strategies and improve sustained protection against SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses in cancer populations. CONCLUSIONS: Cancer populations show heterogeneous and often weaker vaccine-induced immunity, highlighting the need for more personalized vaccination strategies. Improving sustained protection requires a deeper understanding of multilayer immune responses and the use of robust, standardized assays that allow reliable comparisons across studies and patient groups.","journal":"International Journal of Infectious Diseases","year":2025,"id":582956,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9519,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":665213,"name":"Huijing Xue","orcid":"0000-0002-4160-704X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":652810,"name":"Shin La Shu","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":423967,"name":"Shweta Jain","orcid":"0000-0001-6297-0078","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":265769,"name":"Troy J. Kemp","orcid":"0000-0002-1197-7525","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":265768,"name":"Lígia A. Pinto","orcid":"0000-0002-3130-9882","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":284008,"name":"Heidi Hempel","orcid":"0000-0003-2830-0593","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":44,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:58:59.653747Z","pmid":"41297579","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}