Immunotherapy Treatment Outcomes Prediction: Scientists Reveal Methods for Foreseeing Results
Hey there! Let's talk about the latest development in cancer treatment, which is none other than immunotherapy. This new kid on the block uses our body's immune system to combat the disease.
Cancer cells usually have mutations that help them hide from the immune system. Immunotherapy steps in to give a much-needed boost to the immune system so that it can better find and destroy those pesky cancer cells.
But not everyone and every type of cancer can be treated by immunotherapy. That's where researchers from Johns Hopkins University come in. They have found a specific subset of mutations in cancer tumors that suggests how well the tumor might respond to immunotherapy. These mutations are called 'persistent mutations' and they tend to hang around in the cancer cells even as the cancer evolves.
This makes the cancer cells more visible to the immune system, leading to a better response to immunotherapy. The researchers hope their findings will help doctors select patients more accurately for immunotherapy and also predict its effectiveness.
Their latest findings were published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Now, what exactly is immunotherapy? It's a treatment that makes use of our immune system to fight diseases. Usually, cancer cells develop mutations that help them evade the immune system. Immunotherapy provides a boost to the immune system, making it easier for it to find and destroy the cancer cells.
There are several types of immunotherapy including cancer vaccines, checkpoint inhibitors, and CAR-T cell therapy. It's currently used to treat cancers like breast cancer, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer, with scientists looking to use it for cancers like prostate cancer, brain cancer, and ovarian cancer as well.
The study's researchers said that doctors already use the total number of mutations in a tumor, known as tumor mutation burden (TMB), to try to figure out how well a tumor will respond to immunotherapy. However, they found that a specific subset of mutations within the overall TMB, which they call 'persistent mutations', are less likely to disappear as cancer evolves.
This cluster of persistent mutations makes the cancer cells more visible to the immune system, resulting in a better response to immunotherapy. So, the number of persistent mutations may help doctors more accurately select patients for clinical trials of new immunotherapies or predict a patient's clinical outcome with standard-of-care immune checkpoint blockade.
This breakthrough could change how cancer patients are selected for immunotherapy in the future. High-throughput, next-generation sequencing techniques may be used to study patients' mutational spectrum, categorizing them by their likelihood of responding to immunotherapy.
It's an exciting time for cancer research, and immunotherapy is leading the charge! Stay tuned for more updates!
Psst, did you know that certain genetic alterations can enhance the visibility of cancer cells to the immune system, leading to a better response to immunotherapy? For example, Mismatch Repair Deficiency (dMMR) or Microsatellite Instability (MSI-H) cancers have more mutations, leading to increased neoantigen production. This genetic instability makes these cancers more recognizable to the immune system, improving the likelihood of successful immunotherapy.
Frameshift mutations can also generate novel (neo) peptides that the immune system can recognize, enhancing the immune response. Mutation-derived neoantigens can serve as predictive biomarkers for a response to immunotherapy.
- In some cases, certain genetic alterations such as Mismatch Repair Deficiency (dMMR) or Microsatellite Instability (MSI-H) can make cancer cells more visible to the immune system, potentially leading to a better response to immunotherapy.
- Studies suggest that specific genetic mutations, like frameshift mutations, can create new peptides (neo-peptides) that the immune system can recognize, thus enhancing the immune response and offering potential predictive biomarkers for successful immunotherapy.
- As science and medical-conditions like cancer evolve, understanding the role of genetic mutations in making cancer cells more recognizable to the immune system becomes increasingly crucial for applying immunotherapy appropriately and predicting its effectiveness in health-and-wellness treatments.
