New Test Could Predict Immunotherapy Responders for Broader Range of Cancers than Current Tools
Source: Inside Life Changing Medicine, February 2024
A newly identified genetic marker could potentially predict which patients are likely to respond to immunotherapy in cancer types that have lacked such tools until now, according to a study published in Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the study found that tumors with greater number of difficult-to-detect rearrangements of their genetic code — known as intragenic rearrangement (IGR) burden — may respond better to immunotherapy. The findings could pave the way for more precise treatment decisions for patients with cancers such as breast, ovarian, esophageal and uterine.
“Immunotherapy has been a major breakthrough for cancer treatment, but only a small subset of patients respond favorably. The question is, how can we identify these patients?” said senior author Dr. Xiaosong (Johnathan) Wang, associate professor of pathology at Pitt and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. “Genetic tests are available that are great at predicting immunotherapy response in melanoma and lung cancer, but they don’t work well in some other cancers. To help fill this gap, we developed a new approach, which analyzes a class of hidden, or cryptic, rearrangements in the cancer genome.”