Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that stimulates the patient’s own immune system to help it attack and eradicate tumours.
A number of factors determine how well this treatment might work but in general tumours that are immunologically “hot”, which means that they are rich in a cell type called T cells (which are able to kill cancer cells) and proteins known as neoantigens (which allow cancer cells to be recognised by the immune system) often respond well to immunotherapy. To date, this treatment was shown to work extremely well in some patients with melanoma, lung and a number of other types of cancer, but its success in brain cancer has been limited.
This may be set to change as findings from a new study suggest that some of the hard to treat brain cancers may be responsive to immunotherapy.
Results show that some brain tumours that develop in patients affected by a disease known as neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) may be susceptible to immunotherapy. The study which was conducted by an international team of scientists and published in the journal Nature Medicine looked at brain tumour samples from 56 NF1 patients (including children and adults) to identify features that may in the future inform on treatment options for these cancers.
The scientists found that almost half of the slow growing brain tumours (which are usually more common in children) showed the “hot” tumour signature, that is they had a high immune molecular profile together with high content of T cells and neoantigens.
This could suggest that these tumours are likely to respond well to immunotherapy. However, clinical trials will be required to determine the value of this promising treatment in patients with the type of brain tumours described here.
Reference
D’Angelo et al, Nature Medicine 2019
