Investigators Discover Methods to Forecast Treatment Results Using Immunotherapy
Want to know more about immunotherapy and its effectiveness against cancer? Here's the lowdown on this innovative treatment option!
Immunotherapy is one of the newest weapons in the fight against cancer. Even though it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, scientists continue to work on expanding its reach.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have made a breakthrough in identifying specific cancer tumor mutations that may hint at how receptive a tumor could be to immunotherapy. Essentially, their findings could help doctors make more informed decisions about who might benefit from this treatment, plus predictions about treatment outcomes.
But first, let's define immunotherapy: it's a treatment approach that utilizes the body's immune system to combat diseases such as cancer. Typically, cancer cells develop mutations that allow them to elude the body's immune system. Immunotherapy gives the immune system a boost so it can more easily locate and destroy cancer cells.
Here are some types of immunotherapy currently in use:
- Checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)
- Cancer vaccines
- Adoptive cell transfer (ACT)
- CAR T-cell therapy
- Monoclonal antibodies
Immunotherapy is used as a treatment for various cancers such as breast cancer, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer. Researchers are also looking into its potential for treating other types of cancer, like prostate, brain, and ovarian cancers.
To better understand a tumor's susceptibility to immunotherapy, scientists often analyze the total number of mutations found in the cancer cells, known as tumor mutational burden (TMB). However, researchers from Johns Hopkins have uncovered a subset of mutations within the overall TMB called "persistent mutations."These persistent mutations allow the cancer cells to remain visible to the immune system, making it more likely they will respond well to immunotherapy.
The presence of persistent mutations may aid clinicians in selecting patients for clinical trials or predicting clinical outcomes for patients undergoing standard immunotherapy treatments.
Medical News Today spoke with Dr. Kim Margolin, a medical oncologist, about the implications of the study. She notes that understanding the determinants of an effective anticancer immune response, like persistent mutations, could pave the way for personalized immunotherapy treatment programs.
In the future, it might be possible to use high-throughput, next-generation sequencing techniques to analyze patients' mutational spectrum, helping to categorize patients by their likelihood of responding to immunotherapy. This could result in more effective targeting of treatments based on individual patients' mutations.
Sources:
[1] Anagnostou et al., "Persistent mutations as immunogenic drivers during cancer evolution," Nature Medicine (2020).[2] Bifani et al., "Mechanisms of immunotherapy: understanding the outcomes," Expert Review of Anticancer Therapy (2018).
Immunotherapy, a treatment approach that boosts the body's immune system to combat diseases like cancer, has demonstrated potential in fighting various medical conditions such as breast cancer, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer. Scientists are also investigating its application for treating other cancers like prostate, brain, and ovarian cancers. The study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University has revealed a significant finding: the identification of persistent mutations within cancer cells. These persistent mutations make the cancer cells more visible to the immune system, increasing the likelihood of a positive response to immunotherapy. This discovery could lead to personalized immunotherapy treatment programs and the improved targeting of treatments based on individual patients' mutations in the future.
