Study could help explain why certain brain tumors don ’t respond well to immunotherapy

Key takeawaysImmunotherapy has been effective in treating certain types of cancer, including those that spread into the brain. But it has little effect in fighting glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that originates in the brain.UCLA-led research revealed that immune checkpoint blockade, a type of immunotherapy, triggers a process that fights tumors more effectively in cancers that spread to the brain than it does in glioblastoma.The finding could help scientists develop strategies for more effective immunotherapy for treating brain cancers that originate in the brain, like glioblastoma.A study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center sheds new light on why tumors that have spread to the brain from other parts of the body respond to immunotherapy while glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that originates in the brain, does not.In people with tumors that originated in other parts of the body but spread to the brain, treatment with a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint blockade appears to elicit a significant increase in both active and exhausted T cells — signs that the T cells have been triggered to fight the cancer. The reason the same thing doesn't occur in people with glioblastoma is that anti-tumor immune responses are best initiated in draining lymph nodes outside of the brain, and that process does not occur very effectively in glioblastom a cases.To date, immunotherapy has not been effective in treating glioblastoma, but it has been ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news