New research from physicians at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and scientists at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard have discovered the mechanisms that cause some cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) to develop myocarditis, a dangerous and potentially fatal form of heart inflammation. The research, published…

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…

New data from the OlympiA clinical trial presented at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) show that the PARP inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) significantly improves survival in patients with high-risk, BRCA-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer. The findings, after a median follow-up of 6.1 years, further support the drug’s use…

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…

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…

A recent study from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, has uncovered distinct immune “signatures” that could help identify cancer patients at higher risk for developing serious side effects from immunotherapy. By analyzing immune responses in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, researchers…

Over the last decade, immune checkpoint inhibitors have dramatically shifted the treatment and outcomes for patients with advanced melanoma. In a new publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, the final 10-year results of the 945-person, phase III CheckMate 067 trial were reported. This puts a close on the…

Researchers in Germany report they have found islands of highly potent immune cells in the bone marrow of the skull neighboring glioblastoma, a surprising discovery that provides a prospective new avenue for the development of therapies to fight the most common form of brain cancer. Until now, the common notion…

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 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…

A new treatment that combines a personalized dendritic cell vaccine with the immune-boosting substance poly-ICLC has been shown to enhance the immune response and activity of T cells in patients with malignant glioma. The addition of poly-ICLC improves dendritic cells’ ability to treat the brain tumor than the vaccine alone,…

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…

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…

Adult patients with advanced midline gliomas have been treated with a peptide vaccine for the first time, according to researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim, Germany. The vaccine mimicked a mutational change in a histone protein (H3K27M) that is a marker for this difficult-to-treat type of brain tumor. The vaccine proved…