This video is an excerpt from CLL Global Research Foundation’s October 2025 Virtual Town Hall featuring CLL Global President, Dr. William Wierda, and Dr. Catherine Wu of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Watch the full town hall replay.
Expert Panel:
Dr. William Wierda, President & CEO, CLL Global Research Foundation
Dr. Catherine Wu, Chief in the Division of Transplant and Cellular Therapy, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Jeff Folloder, Moderator and CLL patient advocate
Transcript:
Jeff Folloder: What is your recommendation for COVID boosters right now?
Dr. William Wierda: I’ve written a few things about this recently, and I’ve gotten some interesting responses. I worry a little bit about repeated vaccination with an mRNA vaccine that we don’t have a lot of long-term understanding and knowledge on the safety. And so, that’s sort of one component to what my recommendation is. So, if we’re talking about a COVID vaccine, it’s nice to talk about the protein-based vaccine that’s been difficult for patients to access. And again, I have seen patients whose disease has flared with the mRNA-based vaccine. So, I’m a little bit apprehensive. Most of our patients have been vaccinated at some point. Most of them have had boosters and haven’t had problems with their CLL.
Most of them actually have had a COVID infection and cleared a COVID infection. My opinion is that if you’ve had COVID within the last year or at least within the last six months, it may not be critical to get a vaccine right now. And once a year to once every other year, a vaccine should be enough. But I, again, worry a little bit about the repeated stimulation that’s seen with the mRNA vaccines.
And it’s a different clinical situation right now than what it was three, four years ago, where patients don’t die from COVID infections nearly with the frequency of what we saw early on. We have nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid), we have remdesivir (Veklury), IVIG tends to have some coverage for COVID. So, we’re not in the dire situation that we were early on in the COVID pandemic.
And I think we need to be a little bit thoughtful about this repeated vaccine with a vaccine that doesn’t have a lot of long-term data yet. I mean, we’ve had flu vaccines for a long time since I’ve been practicing medicine. So, we know those are safe. The flu vaccine is a protein vaccine. And we do recommend annual flu shots for our patients with the updated new version of the flu vaccine.
Jeff Folloder: Dr. Wu, would you like to add anything to that?
Dr. Catherine Wu: I don’t have a whole lot to add. I think Dr. Wierda gave a very thoughtful, well-measured response. I will agree that today’s scenario is quite different than we were at several years ago. That was really everything was on fire. And I think that the vaccines really helped us get out of the tough spot we were in. But I think we are in a different situation now.
