Tag Archives: clinical-investigation

Predicting outcome for high-dose IL-2 therapy in cancer patients

Previous studies indicate that regulatory T cell (Treg) populations increase in patients undergoing HD IL-2 therapy, and in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Lazlo Radvanyi and colleagues at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center performed an in depth analysis of Treg populations in melanoma patients undergoing HD IL-2 therapy. The authors identified a distinct population of Treg cells that expressed the inducible T cell costimulator (ICOS) that was highly proliferative following the first cycle of HD IL-2. Furthermore, melanoma patients with greater levels of ICOS+ Tregs in response to HD IL-2 had better clinical outcomes, suggesting that this Treg population may be useful to predict which patients would benefit from HD IL-2…

Tipping the balance between senescence, proliferation

In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Abdul Mondal and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute evaluated the expression of these two p53 isoforms in T lymphocytes from healthy donors and donors with lung cancer. In healthy patients, the authors observed an age dependent accumulation of senescent cells and that these cells had an increase in p53β compared to Δ133p53. In lung tumor-associated cells, there was a higher level of the Δ133p53 isoform. …