Posts by tag
immunotherapy
Harmful bacteria play greater role in predicting outcomes of immune checkpoint blockade in melanoma
Harmful gut bacteria may play a greater role than beneficial bacteria in determining efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade in melanoma patients. The study, published in Nature Medicine (28 February), found microbial signatures containing Lachnospiraceae species were connected to favourable anti-programmed…
High-fibre diets associated with improved melanoma immunotherapy response
Melanoma patients eating greater quantities of fibre-rich foods at the start of checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy survive longer than patients with insufficient dietary fibre intake. The observational study, published in Science (23 December 2021), reports benefits to be most noticeable among…
Tackling drug resistance: how our commensal bacteria can hinder or help
Response to therapeutics can differ widely from patient to patient, with some gaining highly significant survival benefits from a therapy that in others elicits no response at all. Patients who respond initially often develop resistance or relapse over time. Not…
Antihistamines could improve efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors
Over-the-counter antihistamines appear to improve outcomes for cancer patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors. The study, reported in Cancer Cell (published online 24 November), found that melanoma and lung cancer patients taking antihistamines targeting the H1 receptor during anti-PD-1/PD-L1 treatment achieved…
Woman or man? Is precision medicine overlooking key biological differences?
“Something that hit me pretty early during my residency as an oncologist was that sex in most cases is a clear-cut binary, pretty obvious biological variable affecting attitudes as well as tolerance to cancer treatment that we still rarely ‒…
Immunotherapy plus chemo: benefits in lung cancer neoadjuvant treatment
Adding a check point inhibitor to chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment for resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) produced significant improvements of pathological complete response (pCR) in comparison to chemotherapy alone. The CheckMate-816 study, presented at the American Association for Cancer…
Natural killers: a new tactical unit joins the cancer immunotherapy brigade
There was a time when all that oncologists treating solid tumours needed to know about leukocytes was how to measure the damage that cytotoxic drugs inflicted on their patients’ white blood cell count and their capacity to fight off infections.…
Immunotherapy toxicities demand a joined up approach from oncologists and organ specialists
Adverse effects of cancer therapies have long been at the root of decision making for interventions in all modalities – surgery, radiotherapy and medical – and especially in the latter category of anti-cancer drugs. Most people have heard of some…
Immunotherapy cardiotoxicity higher than previously estimated
Cancer patients receiving immunotherapy drugs have a much higher incidence of cardiac events than previous estimates from pharmacovigilance data, reports a nationwide Danish registry. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, found patients with lung cancer or malignant melanoma…
Serious patient-reported outcomes data gap in immunotherapy trials revealed
A review of trials of immunotherapy agents revealed a ‘considerable gap’ in the use of patient reported outcomes (PROs), reports a recent study. The data analysis study found PROs were included in less than half of the 44 immunotherapy trials…