A recent study released as a preprint by S. Zhang and W. El-Deiry showed that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein inhibits tumor suppressor gene p53. The media is promoting the speculation this may explain a rise in cancer starting a year after the beginning of the pandemic, when vaccines based on mRNA spike protein production in the body became available. Is this a significant downside of the vaccines?

While this is a theoretical source of trouble, that is far from proving it is of practical importance in a tangible real-world sense. This is a highly artificial in vitro analysis with artificial constructs for purposes of scientific probing and concentrations of exposure of materials and agents that do not well represent real-world circumstances. Nor does this, in a sense, optimal period of exposure to see what will happen to cells in vitro, realistically mimic the potential of the residue from what is a relatively short-lived generation of spike protein by the Covid vaccines and the dynamics of interplay, potentially, should it reach existing cancer cells, let alone be a large enough factor to promote more frequent malignant transformation of normal cells, if at all. So it is a series of conjectures based on the fact there were modest effects seen on a cancer cell line in an artificial environment to lower the inhibition by a standard chemotherapy agent. That modest effect, given all the other factors in terms of cancer requiring time to be initiated and reach a critical mass to become a potential threat to the host, and so on, makes this an extremely preliminary and only suggestive treatise. We do not think this will be of any significance as we have stated before that the mRNA vaccine will not be a significant source of new malignancy in recipients.