New Studies Show How Immunotherapies Collaborate to Treat Melanoma
Source: DocWire News, August 2024
New studies have uncovered how immunotherapies targeting the immune checkpoints PD1 and LAG3 work in concert to active immune responses and may improve outcomes in patients with melanoma compared with monotherapies targeting only PD1. The studies were published in Cell.
In 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the LAG3-targeting drug relatlimab as a combination treatment with nivolumab, which targets PD1, for patients with metastatic melanoma. This combination therapy has been shown to be effective compared with nivolumab alone, but according to researchers, the mechanisms underlying this enhanced antitumor immunity were previously unknown. These new studies help fill this gap.
“These studies are the first in-depth interrogation of the immune system’s response to blocking PD1 and LAG3,” said Dario A. A. Vignali, PhD, chair and distinguished professor in the Department of Immunology at Pitt and senior author on 2 of the papers, via a press release. “We found that targeting PD1 versus both PD1 and LAG3 modulated the function of CD8+ T cells in surprisingly different ways. Understanding these mechanisms is relevant for how we think about combination therapies and optimizing which drugs pair best.”