Yesterday, Boehringer Ingelheim announced it is acquiring Nerio Therapeutics, which has novel checkpoint inhibitors, for up to $1.3 billion. The pharma company aims to develop this program as a “potential key centerpiece component for its immuno-oncology portfolio,” according to a release. Nerio’s small molecules inhibit the proteins tyrosine phosphatases N1…

Research led by a multidisciplinary research team at the University of California Irvine (UCI), reveals that the circadian clock can be leveraged to enhance the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapy. The new study illuminates the relationship among the circadian clock, immune regulation, and tumor development and reveal that a…

A mechanism by which natural killer (NK) cells impede immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in cancer treatment has been uncovered by researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University Medical Center Mannheim (UMM). The team found that the immunoglobulin superfamily ligand B7H6 promotes cytolysis of activated T cells…

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) is an estimated $35B+ market already with multiple cancer indication approvals, but to date, neoadjuvant ICB therapy is only FDA-approved in non-small-cell (NSC) lung cancer and triple-negative breast cancer. This fact masks the huge potential, in both the clinic and research lab, of this class of…

A study from MIT reveals a new reason why checkpoint inhibitors may not work on some tumors. In mice, a tumor’s mutation diversity was much more useful for predicting the treatment’s effectiveness than measuring the overall number of mutations, which was previously thought to be key. The more heterogeneous tumors…

A new type of checkpoint inhibitor targeting bone metastases is being investigated at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, thanks to a $2.3M award from the Department of Defense’s Breast Cancer Research Program. Bone metastases are common among patients with solid tumors, such as those of the breast, colon,…

Immune therapy with checkpoint inhibitors against  PD-L1 and PD-1 is usually considered fairly gentle treatment in the cancer treatment field as far as side effects. But up to 30% of patients receiving them can develop serious toxicity, particularly when used in combination treatments. To help identify those patients ahead of…

New research led by investigators at MIT, has demonstrated that a patient’s own live tumor cells, damaged by chemotherapy, may also augment antitumor immunity. The results suggest these live cell adjuvants may enhance the effectiveness of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in tumors that wouldn’t normally respond to such treatment alone.…

Specific intestinal microbiota signatures correlate with high-grade adverse events and response to combined CTLA-4 and PD-1 blockade treatment, according to a new study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The researchers also identified a potential new strategy to treat toxicity, while maintaining response to combined…

Researchers headed by a team at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) carried out experiments in a dual tumor mouse model, have pinpointed regulatory pathways that are inhibited when liver metastases have developed. The results showed that the presence of tumor antigen in the liver not only compromised immunity…

Investigators at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in conjunction with researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, have discovered that a metabolic imbalance in some cancer patients following treatment with a checkpoint inhibitor drug, nivolumab, is associated with resistance to the immunotherapy agent and shorter survival. Findings from the…

The cancer immunotherapy toolbox may one day make room for a new tool, the DNA-encoded monoclonal antibody (DMAb). Like conventional monoclonal antibodies, DMAbs bind to cancer checkpoint molecules, thereby releasing the brakes on immune cell activity. Unlike conventional monoclonal antibodies, DMAbs are expressed in vivo rather than being painstakingly manufactured,…

A University of California, San Diego (UCSD)-led research team has discovered that a small subset of diverse solid tumor ]types harbour amplifications in the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PDL1) gene, a finding that could help to identify additional cancer patients who will respond to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors…

A preclinical study by Cleveland Clinic researchers reveals that the immune checkpoint protein VISTA can turn off tumor-fighting T cells during immunotherapy and resist treatment. The work using mouse models, showed that VISTA can bind to a protein called LRIG1 in T cells, which was previously only thought to promote…

Most pancreatic tumors are surrounded by a thick, nearly impenetrable wall of fibrosis— scar tissue—that makes it hard for drugs to access and destroy the cancer cells. Researchers at the Salk Institute have now discovered how a class of anticancer drugs called histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) can help treat pancreatic…