© TIM VERNON/SCIENCE SOURCEImmunotherapy has revolutionized the fight against cancer. People who otherwise would have had little hope of survival are experiencing extraordinary comebacks when treated with a class of medicines called checkpoint inhibitors. The inhibitors disable a molecular disguise that cancer cells use to hide from the immune system, allowing a patient’s own defenses to destroy tumors.
Although clearly transformative, these innovative treatments have faced challenges integrating within the framework of personalized oncology. Personalized treatments have traditionally been prescribed based on the presence of a single genetic vulnerability, but in immunotherapy the formula is not so simple. Each person’s immune system is wired slightly differently, giving it a unique degree of sensitivity to cancer. Currently, only about 20 percent to 40 percent of patients respond to the most effective combination of two checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies.
Determining who will benefit from immunotherapy is an enormous challenge. But by taking a comprehensive view—considering protein biomarkers, mutational changes, and immune cell signatures together—I believe we have a promising path forward.
The current standard for predicting responses to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies is through the measurement of ...
