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NEW YORK, NY (March 1, 2021) By harnessing the immune system against cancer, immunotherapies have revolutionized the way some types of cancer are treated. But most patients across cancer types do not respond, and in most cases, scientists are at a loss as to why.
Researchers at Columbia and MIT have created a new technique that can uncover nearly all of the tricks cancer cells use to evade immunotherapies, which could lead to the development of more effective treatments.
The researchers tested their new technique with cancer cells and matching immune cells from melanoma patients and identified previously unknown resistance mechanisms to immune checkpoint inhibitors, a powerful and widely used class of immunotherapy drugs.
For decades, researchers have viewed synonymous mutations as inconsequential quirks of the genome. Due to the way the genetic code is set up where multiple three-base-pair codons can encode the same amino acid mutations can arise that don’t change a protein’s amino acid sequence. Scientists have largely dismissed these anomalies as harmless oddities.
But like other historically underappreciated aspects of the genome, scientists are realizing that many “silent” mutations might not be so silent after all. Research suggests they’re often subject to selective pressure and could play a role in cancer, autism, and schizophrenia.
A study published online last week (February 12) in
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A test that monitors blood levels of DNA fragments released by dying tumor cells may serve as an accurate early indicator of treatment success in people in late stages of one of the most aggressive forms of skin cancer, a new study finds.
Led by NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Perlmutter Cancer Center researchers, the investigation looked at adults with undetectable levels of freely circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) four weeks into drug treatment for metastatic melanoma tumors that cannot be removed surgically (unresectable). The study showed that these patients, all of whom had common genetic changes (BRAFV600 mutations) linked to cancer, were living nearly twice as long without cancer growth as those who continued to have detectable levels.