Immunotherapy Outcome Prediction: Scientists Discover Strategies for Anticipating Treatment Success
Every year, research advances in the search for effective cancer treatments. One of the latest developments is immunotherapy, a treatment that utilizes the body's immune system to combat the disease. While immunotherapy has shown promise, not all individuals and all types of cancer are receptive to this treatment.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have made a significant breakthrough in identifying a specific subset of cancer tumor mutations that can indicate a tumor's receptiveness to immunotherapy. According to their findings, published in Nature Medicine, these mutations, referred to as "persistent mutations," are less likely to disappear as a cancer evolves, allowing the cancer cells to remain visible to the body's immune system and improving the cancer's response to immunotherapy.
Doctors currently use the total number of mutations in a tumor, known as tumor mutation burden (TMB), to assess a tumor's likely response to immunotherapy. However, the Johns Hopkins researchers believe their findings will enable doctors to more accurately select individuals for immunotherapy and better predict the outcome of the treatment.
When cancer cells develop mutations, they often become hidden from the immune system. Immunotherapy provides a boost to the immune system, making it easier for it to find and destroy cancer cells. There are several types of immunotherapy, including checkpoint inhibitors, vaccines, adoptive cell therapies, and cytokine therapies.
Immunotherapy is currently being used to treat certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer. Researchers are also investigating its potential use in treating other types of cancer, including prostate cancer, brain cancer, and ovarian cancer.
Dr. Valsamo Anagnostou, a senior author of the study, emphasized the importance of persistent mutations for determining a cancer's response to immunotherapy. She explained that these persistent mutations render the cancer cells continuously visible to the immune system, leading to a stronger immune response and better outcomes with immunotherapy. According to Anagnostou, persistent mutation load may help clinicians more accurately select patients for clinical trials of novel immunotherapies or predict a patient's clinical outcome with standard-of-care immune checkpoint blockade.
Dr. Kim Margolin, a medical oncologist, praised the study for its focus on persistent mutations and their role in the immune response to cancer. She stated that these mutations, along with the presenting neo-antigens and the patient's own complement of immune cells, are likely the most important determinants of an effective anticancer immune response.
In the future, Margolin predicts that high-throughput, next-generation sequencing techniques may be used to study patients' mutational spectrum, allowing for more accurate categorization of patients by their likelihood of responding to immunotherapy. She suggested that these advances could eventually provide predictive factors that can interact with therapy and disease, ultimately improving outcomes for cancer patients.
- The scientists' discovery of persistent mutations could enable doctors to more accurately choose individuals for immunotherapy, thereby better predicting the success of treatments.
- Dr. Valsamo Anagnostou believes that persistent mutations make cancer cells perpetually visible to the immune system, leading to a stronger immune response when using immunotherapy.
- Research on persistent mutations could lead to the use of immunotherapy in treating various types of cancer beyond breast cancer, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer.
- Doctors currently use tumor mutation burden (TMB) to guess a tumor's reactivity to immunotherapy, but research on persistent mutations might provide a more accurate way of doing so.
