Investigators Discover Methods to Anticipate Immunotherapy Results
Immunotherapy, a cutting-edge cancer treatment, leverages the body's immune system to combat the disease. Cancer cells often develop mutations, allowing them to hide from the immune system. Immunotherapy gives the immune system a boost, helping it locate and neutralize cancer cells.
Although immunotherapy is making strides in cancer treatment, not all cases can benefit from this treatment. Researchers from Johns Hopkins have found a solution to this conundrum: identifying specific tumor mutations that suggest how receptive a tumor will be to immunotherapy.
In their study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered a specific subset of cancer mutations called "persistent mutations." Persistent mutations help cancer tumors remain visible to the immune system, enhancing the response to immunotherapy.
The discovery of these persistent mutations could transform the way doctors select patients for immunotherapy and predict treatment outcomes. In the future, high-throughput, next-generation sequencing techniques might be employed to examine patients' mutational spectrum, enabling more accurate patient selection for immunotherapy.
What is Immune Checkpoint Blockade?
Immune checkpoint blockade is a therapeutic approach for cancer treatment that works by inhibiting the interaction between immune checkpoints (proteins on immune cells) and their ligands on cancer cells. This inhibition allows the immune system to effectively attack the cancer cells.
Tumor Mutation Burden vs. Persistent Mutation Load
Traditionally, doctors have used the total number of mutations in a tumor, known as tumor mutation burden (TMB), to predict a tumor's receptiveness to immunotherapy. However, recent research suggests that persistent mutation load, which focuses on the subset of mutations that are always present and unlikely to disappear as cancer evolves, provides a more accurate prediction of immunotherapy response.
Persistent mutation loads allow the cancer tumor to remain visible to the immune system, enhancing the immune response and leading to sustained tumor control and longer survival. This discovery could revolutionize cancer treatment by providing more targeted and effective immunotherapy options for patients.
- The immunotherapy system, a crucial component in health-and-wellness, particularly in medical-conditions like cancer, offers therapies-and-treatments by boosting the immune system to combat the disease.
- Recent medical-research, carried out by Johns Hopkins scientists, has found a solution to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy: identifying persistent mutations, a specific subset of cancer-mutations, in tumors.
- These persistent mutations, discovered by the Johns Hopkins team and published in the journal Nature Medicine, make cancer tumors more visible to the immune system, enhancing the response to immunotherapy.
- In the future, immune checkpoint blockade treatments could benefit significantly from the use of high-throughput, next-generation sequencing techniques to examine persistent mutation loads, providing more accurate patient selection and predicting improved treatment outcomes.
