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DURHAM, N.C. - Glioblastoma brain tumors are especially perplexing. Inevitably lethal, the tumors occasionally respond to new immunotherapies after they ve grown back, enabling up to 20% of patients to live well beyond predicted survival times.
What causes this effect has long been the pursuit of researchers hoping to harness immunotherapies to extend more lives.
New insights from a team led by Duke s Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center provide potential answers. The team found that recurring glioblastoma tumors with very few mutations are far more vulnerable to immunotherapies than similar tumors with an abundance of mutations.
The finding, appearing online Jan. 13 in the journal
Credit: The Wistar Institute
PHILADELPHIA (Jan. 12, 2021) Scientists at The Wistar Institute have created an advanced humanized immune system mouse model that allows them to examine resistance to immune checkpoint blockade therapies in melanoma. It has revealed a central role for mast cells. These findings were published today in the journal
Nature Communications.
Checkpoint inhibitors revolutionized therapeutic options for advanced melanoma. However, only a fraction of patients respond to this treatment and some relapse due to reemergence of therapy-resistant lesions. To better understand why some cancers do not respond or become resistant to checkpoint therapies, we need more preclinical models that mimic the human tumor immune environment, said Rajasekharan Somasundaram, Ph.D., a member of The Wistar Institute Melanoma Research Center, who is the first and corresponding author of the paper.