Treatment through the Immunosystem: Scientists discover methods to foresee treatment successes
Cancer patients may soon benefit from a more accurate identification of treatment options, thanks to a breakthrough by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The team has discovered a specific subset of mutations within cancer tumors that suggests whether the disease will respond favorably to immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy, an innovative treatment approach utilizing the body's immune system, has shown promise against various cancers such as breast, melanoma, leukemia, and non-small cell lung cancer. However, its effectiveness is not universal—not every person or cancer type can be treated with this method.
Researchers have previously used the overall number of mutations in a tumor, commonly referred to as the tumor mutation burden (TMB), to predict responses to immunotherapy. In this study, Johns Hopkins scientists have delved deeper, identifying a subset of persistent mutations within the TMB. These mutations remain constant throughout tumor evolution, keeping cancer cells continuously "visible" to the immune system, which promotes a better response to immunotherapy.
Dr. Valsamo Anagnostou, a senior author and associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins, explains that persistent mutations provide a more optimally accurate method of identifying tumors likely to respond to immune checkpoint blockade. Once confirmed in clinical trials, these findings could revolutionize cancer treatment by helping doctors select patients more accurately and predict their clinical outcomes with greater accuracy.
By shining a new light on persistent mutations and their connection to a patient's immune response, the research offers hope for the future. In coming years, it's possible that high-throughput sequencing techniques will enable doctors to categorize patients by their likelihood of responding to immunotherapy, potentially fine-tuning treatments and improving overall survival rates.
According to Dr. Kim Margolin, a medical oncologist and medical director of the Saint John's Cancer Institute Melanoma Program, the study demonstrates a significant stride in understanding a highly-respected academic group's understanding of how persistent mutations can improve cancer patient outcomes. By focusing on persisting mutations and their associated neoantigens, the immune system can be harnessed to destroy cancer cells, providing a beneficial synergy with immunotherapy-enhancing treatments.
For cancer patients, this breakthrough hints at a bright future as researchers work to refine treatment options through a deeper understanding of cancer tumors and the immune system's role in their eradication.
- This discovery at Johns Hopkins University might revolutionize cancer treatment by allowing doctors to identify tumors that are likely to respond favorably to immunotherapy, using persistent mutations found within the tumor mutation burden (TMB).
- Immunotherapy, when combined with treatments that harness the immune system to destroy cancer cells associated with persisting mutations, could potentially fine-tune treatments and improve overall survival rates for many cancer patients.
- In the future, high-throughput sequencing techniques could enable doctors to categorize patients by their likelihood of responding to immunotherapy, based on the presence of persistent mutations and their associated neoantigens, thereby potentially offering a more accurate identification of treatment options for various medical conditions including cancer.
