A new study published in Cancer Cell describes a promising novel approach to stratifying patients with urothelial carcinoma and predict their response to checkpoint inhibitor drugs that target the programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor or its ligand, PD-L1. “This study represents a large integration of molecular and clinical data in…

New light has been shed on programmed death receptor ligand-1 (PD-L1) and how its intracellular signaling affects immune suppression and cancer progression. A team from the University of Colorado School of Medicine studied the interactome, or group of proteins with which the intracellular domain of PD-L1 interacts. They found that…

Scientists at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center used CRISPR-based screening to help identify a mechanism by which cancer cells can regulate the production of a protein that suppresses immune system responses against the tumor. The team’s combined studies in human lung cancer cells and in mice found…

RareCyte now offers a liquid biopsy blood test for programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) that evaluates PD-L1 expression on circulating tumor cells (CTCs).  The PD-L1 assay and the AccuCyte-CyteFinder system processes a single tube of blood to cells for CTC enumeration and PD-L1 biomarker expression analysis, and to plasma for optional…

It may be possible to reawaken a patient’s own immune response against a bladder tumor using immunotherapy, according to a recent study by scientists from Barts Cancer Institute in London, Queen Mary University of London, and HistoGeneX in Belgium, which is a laboratory focused on tissue pathology and genomics.  Their study was…

Assessing the level of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expressed by a non–small-cell lung (NSCLC) tumor can help clinicians determine how the patient should be treated. Now, researchers report (“A Novel Approach to Detect Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) Status and Multiple Tumor Mutations Using a Single Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer…

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) School of Medicine revealed that the exosomes (extracellular vesicles) that contain programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), released by melanoma cells, are found far beyond the tumor microenvironment and could be purified from the plasma of patients. James L. Gulley, M.D., Ph.D.,…

Extending a collaboration launched last year, Celsee said it will commercialize a gene panel and several tests incorporating the single-cell diagnostic technology platform of IncellDx. Under a co-marketing and development agreement whose value was not disclosed, Celsee and IncellDx plan to commercialize: A 20-marker Cell-by-Cell Lung Cancer Genomics and Proteomics…

Biocept said today it will partner with University of California San Diego (UCSD) Medical Center on a clinical validation study of the company’s PD-L1 assay for patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Under the collaboration, whose value was not disclosed, Sandip Patel, M.D., an assistant professor of UCSD…

A new study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention by a team of researchers from Yale, USC, UC San Diego, and Epic Sciences show the presence of PD-L1 protein on circulating cells from newly diagnosed lung cancer patient points to poor survival rates for patients not treated with a…

Cancer immunotherapy has ignited a firestorm of new drug compounds that target novel tumor markers that activate patients’ immune system to destroy various cancer cell types. These therapies have provided remarkable success; however, they are expensive to produce and administer, with a percentage of patients showing little to no therapeutic…

The first machine learning-based tool that can predict immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) response using routine clinical data such as complete blood counts and metabolic profiles has been developed. The SCORPIO model was validated using data from 9,745 patients across 21 cancer types treated with ICIs from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center…

Results from the newly published, practice-changing NIAGARA trial represent important progress towards curing bladder cancer, though expert opinion suggests predictive biomarkers could improve survival further. Findings from the open-label trial, which appear in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, showed the advantages of immunotherapy-based therapy for…

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a computational method to assess which patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer could benefit from immunotherapy. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, aims to develop a more…

Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have shown that mutations in the STK11 and/or KEAP1 tumor suppressor genes could serve as biomarkers for identifying lung cancer patients likely to benefit from dual immune checkpoint blockade. The study, published in Nature “advances precision medicine for a substantial fraction…