Immuno-oncology

Memory killer cells have been shown to respond to immunotherapy, which is normally administered as a complement to other cancer treatments.

Treatment with lisocabtagene maraleucel led to strong and durable response rates with little serious adverse effects in patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma.

Approximately 50% of patients with refractory or relapsed disease achieved complete response following treatment with the Janus kinase 1 (JAK1) inhibitor.

A single dose of axicabtagene ciloleucel in patients with large B-cell lymphoma led to significantly higher overall survival and progression-free survival rates, as well as improvements in quality of life and faster recovery in comparison to standard care therapy.

A plethora of targeted therapies, biomarker-driven therapies, and immunotherapies are now available.

Glofitamab targets CD3, a protein found on the surface of immune T cells in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and CD20, a healthy or malignant protein that lines the surfaces of B cells.

Earlier in June, Govindan led an educational session about genomic testing at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

The folate alpha receptor (FRα) does have a toxicity profile, but unlike other chemotherapies, it does not severely compromise bone marrow and may improve ability to receive more therapies.

Systemic treatment options have historically been limited to traditional chemotherapy agents.

Golidocitinib (DZD4205) is the first Janus kinase 1 inhibitor to be used for this aggressive and rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Until this study, adjuvant immunotherapy was standard of care for stage 3B melanoma but not stage 2, which has relatively similar survival rates and risk of recurrence.

Asking patients to “give us a month of [their] life” for autologous chimeric antigen receptor therapy may reduce relapse or recurrence for 4 years or more, according to expert.

Expert suggests that mirvetuximab soravtansine-gynx, which received accelerated approval in the platinum-resistant ovarian cancer setting in 2022, is the most promising agent in more than a decade that targets folate receptor alpha.

Expert said these striking results, coupled with benefits across all subgroups and potential overall survival, suggests efficacy for adults with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer.

Expert discusses the long wait for an effective therapeutic option for persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer and the potential widespread benefits of antibody drug conjugates like pembrolizumab.

FR alpha expression is limited on normal cells, but upregulated on cancers such as ovarian, endometrial, and triple-negative breast cancers.

Identifying alterations in tumor genes has enabled medical oncologists to guide patients towards more specific therapies.

Expert said that manufacturing the T cells with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor may allow more patients to get allogeneic stem cell transplant, the current best means of long-term cure.

Fecal microbiota transplant from responders to non-responders was able to rescue immune checkpoint inhibition use in patients with melanoma, with 40% of patients showing clinical benefit.

High tumor fraction after induction chemotherapy identifies a population with an unmet need who has low chances to benefit from immune checkpoint blockades.

Obe-cel is an investigational CD19 CAR T-cell therapy currently in clinical trials for relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Study shows 18.4% of patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia treated with lisocabtagene maraleucel achieved a complete response (CR), with median duration of CR not reached at median follow-up of 21.1 months.

Treatment with epcoritamab-bysp showed a 61% overall response rate and a 38% complete response rate in heavily pretreated patients with R/R DLBCL.

Study of cell exhaustion in immunotherapy-resistant tumors could significantly improve the benefits of cancer immunotherapy for patients with treatment resistant types of cancer.

US Preventive Services Task Force also called for more research into how to address screening and treatment disparities faced by racial and ethnic minorities.

Findings may offer insight into new strategies to tackle skin cancer in patients already treated with a prior line of therapy.

Up to 80% of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma will experience disease recurrence.

Six weeks after infusion of GD2-CART01, 9 of 27 patients (33%) with relapsed or refractory high-risk neuroblastoma had a complete response or maintained a complete response.

Although payers have become somewhat accustomed to the high cost of specialty drugs, the price tags for gene therapies are causing “sticker shock.”

According to 5-year follow-up data, the combination of tafasitamab-cxix and lenalidomide produced a durable response in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.