Immune checkpoint blockade: Powerful cancer therapy influence by genetics
“The genetic signature we have found will be invaluable to understanding the biological mechanisms that drive therapeutic responses to immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma,” says Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, director of the Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory and associate director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK, who co-led the study with Timothy Chan, MD, PhD, of MSK’s Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program. “Further, our strategy can now be applied to determine the genetic signatures associated with the efficacy of a number of other immunotherapies and cancers.” Few approaches to treating cancer have generated as much excitement as immunotherapy, in which the immune system is engaged to destroy malignancies. One class of such treatments targets CTLA-4, a molecule expressed on the surface of killer T cells that ordinarily blocks their proliferation…