A new study identifies several new genetic mechanisms linked to aggressive cases of Ewing sarcoma, including some not previously identified genes. These mechanisms promote metastasis and lead to a poorer prognosis. The team integrated gene expression data from patients and cellular models of Ewing sarcoma to identify a gene signature…

Adding the antibody therapy pembrolizumab to standard care for people with soft tissue sarcoma can significantly improve survival in these patients according to new research. The study was led by the University Health Network in Toronto and published in The Lancet. It showed that disease-free survival was improved by 39%…

UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have used a platform-based method to create the largest collection of personalized organoid models for patients with sarcoma to date. If confirmed through clinical trials, the predictive power of the platform “could help make data-driven decisions, so that the therapy with the highest…

A Phase I trial led by the Baylor College of Medicine shows an autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for treatment of advanced HER2-specific sarcoma was beneficial in 50% of patients in the trial. Lower-level cytokine release syndrome was fairly common in the study, but only two individuals had…

New research by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory demonstrates differentiation therapy as a new treatment option for Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a rare type of cancer that forms in soft tissue. RMS can occur at any age, but it most often affects children. Treatment usually involves chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation procedures.…

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Replay announced this week that its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for NY-ESO-1 TCR/IL-15 NK, an engineered T cell receptor natural killer (TCR NK) cell therapy for advanced synovial sarcoma and myxoid/round cell liposarcoma has received a “safe to proceed” clearance…

Scientists have discovered a new drug target for Ewing sarcoma, a protein known as ETV6, which is widely found in all cells, including normal cells. Known to have some function in hematopoietic cell development, its function in cancer has remained mostly unknown.  Using human sarcoma cells, researchers from the Cold…

Scientists Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have discovered that some types of highly aggressive soft-tissue sarcoma tumors create high levels of the protein macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), a protein that normally blocks tumor growth. But instead of blocking cancer, MIF does the opposite in these sarcomas, ultimately leading to tumor growth.…

In a small study of 16 patients with angiosarcoma, tumors in four patients partially or completely responded to treatment with a combination of the immunotherapy drugs ipilimumab and nivolumab. Another two patients maintained stable disease on the drug combination. In some cases, responses to treatment have been sustained for longer…

An exome sequencing study among 1,244 osteosarcoma patients revealed more of them harbored a pathogenic or likely pathogenic germline variant in a cancer-susceptibility gene compared to those without cancer. Specifically, 28 percent of osteosarcoma patients carry such a variant compared with 12.1 percent of individuals without cancer. Findings from the…

Research from a team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has revealed a number of different mechanisms that help explain why immunotherapy clinical trials targeting osteosarcoma have, thus far, failed to yield significant advances and suggested new therapeutic strategies based on these findings. Osteosarcoma is the most…

Investigators from the Tufts University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, have just uncovered that a rare bone cancer in children—known as osteosarcoma (OS)— is genetically similar in dogs. The researchers are optimistic that the findings could help break the logjam in the…

Next-generation sequencing (NGS)–based molecular profiling for non–GI stromal tumor (non-GIST) sarcomas can guide clinical management in at least a small percent (about 18%) of patients, say researchers from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. The findings were based on data from a study of 114 patients at the Center. “We…

The largest genetic sequencing study of osteosarcoma to date has revealed that some patients with osteosarcoma could be helped by existing treatments. A team of researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University College London Cancer Institute, and the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital NHS Trust, has found that 10% of…

Cancer Moonshot 2020, a comprehensive cancer collaboration of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academic cancer centers, community oncologists, and communications technology companies, has announced the formation of the melanoma and sarcoma working group with the goal of speeding promising immunotherapies to clinical trials. The working group will be chaired by Richard…