Vienna-based OncoOne is taking aim at developing highly tumor-targeted radioimmunotherapy (RIT) treatments against a range of solid tumors using its proprietary PreTarg-it platform. The two-step process of delivering bispecific antibodies directly to the tumor site shows potential to significantly reduce the side effects associated with treating solid tumors with RIT.…

Men with a specific prostate cancer mutation could benefit from treatment with dual immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Writing in the Annals of Oncology, Niven Mehra, MD, PhD, an oncologist and researcher based at the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues report that men whose tumor had…

Five features predict response to checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) chemotherapy across a wide range of cancers, research indicates. The findings, in Nature Genetics, could drive the personalization of cancer treatment by identifying people most likely to benefit from immunotherapy. They could also widen the use of immunotherapy, as several groups of…

Philanthropist couple Gary and Alya Michelson have announced a $120 million gift to establish the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy at UCLA’s new Research Park. The new institute will comprise two research entities each provided with $50 million for their launch. One will focus on the rapid development of…

Surgical resection for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), one of the forms of liver cancer, is typically reserved only for those patients with single tumors without vascular invasion, but new research from a retrospective study by investigators at the Johns Hopkins shows that neoadjuvant immunotherapy could allow high-risk HCC patients, including those…

Immunotherapy, particularly with checkpoint inhibitors like the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab and CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab, has transformed melanoma treatment by leveraging the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. However, despite its effectiveness, this treatment can lead to severe grade 3–5 immune-related adverse events (irAEs), affecting over a third…

A small research study carried out in Seoul in South Korea suggests transplanting fecal microbes from cancer patients who respond to immunotherapy could help improve the treatment response in non-responders. The small study, published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, showed improved therapy responses in six out of thirteen…

Cancer immunotherapy has made significant strides over the past few decades, primarily due to the advent of engineered T cells. Two types of engineered T cells have been at the forefront of these advancements: those utilizing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and those equipped with T cell receptors (TCRs). Both approaches…

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have tested a new cellular immunotherapy whereby they engineered normal white blood cells (lymphocytes) from each patient to produce receptors that recognize and attack their specific cancer cells. Reported in Nature Medicine, the interim data in the phase II trial of people…

A vaccine for Parkinson’s disease could be on the horizon, according to a new study published in Nature Medicine. Vaxxinity’s immunotherapy targeting pathogenic α-synuclein aggregates has achieved its immunogenicity, safety, and tolerability goals in a phase I clinical trial in Parkinson’s patients. The vaccine, known as UB-312, was shown to…

The neurotoxic side effects of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy have been a mystery, but new research has revealed a possible drug target that could help alleviate these effects. These side effects have reduced the efficacy of this revolutionary cancer treatment. Anti-PD1 immunotherapy causes neurotoxicity in mice by activating microglia, according to a…

In a proof-of-concept study published in Nature Cancer, scientists have shown that their artificial intelligence tool improves the predictive likelihood of a patient responding to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Known as the Logistic Regression-Based Immunotherapy-Response Score (LORIS), the tool relies on six common data points and computes a score predicting whether…

A machine learning pipeline that combines multiple omics datasets was used to derive a new transcriptomic footprint correlated with positive outcomes in patients with advanced kidney cancer who underwent immunotherapy. The approach identified the molecular characteristics of an immune signaling hub distinguished by a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) repertoire with…

Researchers at University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) have discovered that an immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, significantly increases the number of patients who are cancer-free after surgery for bowel cancer, according to interim results from the NEOPRISM-CRC phase II clinical trial presented at the American Society of…

Researchers at the University College London (UCL) and UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health have developed a novel immunotherapeutic platform technology that uses engineered T cells to attack bone cancer cells and activate other cancer-fighting immune cells to do the same.  The researchers aimed to overcome different challenges…