A team of investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, reporting in Cancer Discovery, has discovered a druggable target on natural killer cells that could create a therapeutic response in patients with immunotherapy-resistant triple-negative breast cancer. While immunotherapy has shown promise across a range of cancers and tumor types, only about 15%…

Although the treatment landscape for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has evolved dramatically over the last decade, translation of these therapeutic advances to earlier-stage NSCLC has lagged. However, results of the Phase II NeoCOAST trial show that combination immunotherapy with anti-PD-L1 durvalumab and one of several other immunotherapies…

Investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), reporting in Cell Reports Medicine, say that a deep learning model they have developed can identify previously underappreciated features in clear cell renal carcinoma (ccRCC) from a two-dimensional pathology slide including tumor microheterogeneity that could help predict this rare kidney cancer’s response to immunotherapy.…

Research presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2023 World Conference has shown that first-line immunotherapy with nivolumab plus ipilimumab gives rise to durable survival benefits in a significant proportion of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The 6-year update of the CheckMate 227 trial,…

New evidence suggests lymph nodes play a key role in why tumors that have spread to the brain respond to immunotherapy, while glioblastoma, which originates in the brain, does not. “Typically, antigen presenting cells (e.g., conventional dendritic cells, cDCs) are recruited to the tumor, where they phagocytose dead or dying tumor…

The location of cytotoxic T cells, in and around tumors, may help predict lung cancer patient survival and treatment response, according to work from University of Edinburgh researchers. Their findings, they say, could help to pave the way for improved immunotherapies. Such treatments are revolutionary in their ability to cure…

A multicenter Phase II clinical trial showed that combination immunotherapy drug therapy with ipilimumab (an anti-CTLA-4 drug) and nivolumab (an anti-PD-1 therapy) is an effective second-line therapy for patients with melanoma that has progressed on PD-1 inhibitors alone.  It is the first randomized study showing that continuing PD-1 therapy beyond…

Etcembly, a U.K. biotech, has developed a new immunotherapy to target hard-to-treat cancers using generative artificial intelligence (AI) similar to that used to create ChatGPT. According to the company, this is the first time a candidate immunotherapy has been designed by generative AI. The new therapeutic candidate is a bispecific…

Salk scientists have found the immunotherapy treatment anti-CTLA-4 leads to considerably greater survival of mice with mesenchymal glioblastoma. Furthermore, they discovered that this therapy relied on CD4+ T cells infiltrating the brain and triggering the tumor-destructive activities of immune cells called microglia, which permanently reside in the brain. Published in Immunity,…

In 2012, 6-year-old Emily Whitehead’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia returned, and no traditional treatment options remained. So she became the first child to receive CAR-T immunotherapy, which engineered her T cells to fight the cancer. More than a decade later, Emily is cancer-free. Her success spawned new hope that immunotherapy could…

GDF-15’s role in resistance to cancer immunotherapy was reinforced in a Nature Communications study published today. The researchers demonstrated that GDF-15 blocks LFA-1-dependent T cell recruitment into the tumor microenvironment, a prerequisite for responses to anti-PD-1/-L1 treatment and other immunotherapeutic strategies. This, the authors say, is the first paper to…

Potential new biomarkers could point to which metastatic melanoma patients will respond to immunotherapy treatment, according to work by scientists at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. They found that increased levels of both a protein called CXCL13 and B cells are associated with improved survival on immunotherapy. These findings…

A trio of immune cells are key to immunotherapy response in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), according to new work from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The research team found that interaction between mature dendritic cells, CXCL13+ T follicular-helper-like cells, and progenitor CD8 T cells helps to maintain a…

Findings by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania should reassure patients and clinicians that stopping immunotherapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after two years is not detrimental to survival when compared with continuing indefinitely. “Our study found that for patients who stopped immunotherapy at two years, their survival was…

Results from a Phase II clinical trial show immunotherapy with pembrolizumab provided a benefit in 42 percent of patients with brain cancer that metastasized from a range of primary tumors. This study was designed as an open-label, single-stage, single-arm Phase II clinical trial evaluating the intracranial efficacy of pembrolizumab, a…