66 Scientific American, February 2022
Diana M. Chavez of Los Angeles was diagnosed with
multiple myeloma in 2020. “Nothing is more difficult
than getting a cancer diagnosis during a pandemic,”
she says. “It’s unknown territory.” Chavez, age 66, had
to attend doctor’s appointments alone and was not
able to have visitors in the hospital because of COVID
restrictions. “There was no relative or friend who could
be my advocate to remind me of all the questions I had
and needed to ask, with all the decisions I had to
quickly make,” she says.
Chavez did not develop a protective antibody
response after two doses of the Moderna vaccine, but
she finally did after a third. She takes a steroid med-
ication as part of her myeloma treatment, but she
decided to briefly pause taking it around the time she
got her third shot. (She informed her doctor of her
intention. Patients should always consult their phy-
sicians before stopping or changing any treatment
regimen.) “For the first time yesterday, I went out with
a friend and had breakfast,” Chavez says. But she is
still being cautious. “Sometimes, even under the bestof circumstances, when you’re trying to be mindful,
things still happen,” she says, adding that the big
question about cancer patients who are able to have
a response to the vaccine is “How long will it hold?
Are we going to have to keep getting vaccinated?”
Last July, James Berenson, medical and scientific
director of the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer
Research in West Hollywood, Calif., and his colleagues
published a study online in the journal Leukemia of the
immune response to mRNA vaccination among multi-
ple myeloma patients. They found that only 45 percent
of those with active myeloma developed an adequate
level of antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer or Mod-
erna vaccine, and 22 percent had a partial response.
Study participants who received the Moderna vaccine
had higher antibody levels than those who received the
Pfizer shot, Berenson found. “We discovered older folks
like Colin Powell—those who are over about 70 and
those people with lower lymphocyte [immune cell]
counts, with lower antibody levels reflective of this
impaired immune system, who are doing poorly withBEFORE the pan
demic, Franklin
was physically
active and com
peted in the Inter
national Transplant
Games. But COVID
has limited the
activities he
can safely do.