The tipping point of cancer biomarker quality
Too often the access to quality biomarkers is undermined by poor knowledge on the need for quality assurance. Relying on the assumption that biomarkers bring ‘innovation’ without claiming quality may be appealing to some, perhaps not really to medical conservatives – and not to patients, for sure.
Adjuvant pembrolizumab prolongs relapse-free survival in resected stage II melanoma
Immunotherapy was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of disease recurrence compared with placebo in patients with melanoma
KEYNOTE-826 trial met its dual primary endpoints
Survival benefit with first-line pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer
The role of T-VEC in the treatment of advanced melanoma: just a matter of combinations?
The oncolytic herpes virotherapy does not show survival benefit in combination with pembrolizumab, but encouraging early data are reported with intratumoural injection of myeloid dendritic cells
Novel immunotherapy-containing strategies look promising in microsatellite stable mCRC
Immune chemo-sensitisation results show potential for this approach in the treatment of advanced CRC, but greater understanding of response characteristics is required in future clinical trials
Novel liquid biomarkers show promise in predicting clinical outcomes with immunotherapy
Although encouraging results are presented, standardisation of methodology and large-scale clinical trials are needed before potential candidates can be used in routine clinical practice
Positive preliminary data with the T-cell receptor fusion construct, gavocabtagene autoleucel
Manageable toxicity profile and signs of clinical benefit seen with gavocabtagene autoleucel in treatment-refractory mesothelin-expressing solid tumours
Early-stage HER2+ breast cancer may benefit from de-escalated treatment, but biomarkers are still required
Findings from three studies highlight that selecting patients for de-escalated treatment is still challenging
Novel approaches to improve immunotherapy and more news on synthetic lethality
The ESMO Congress 2021 has started today with three sessions on developmental therapeutics, including immunotherapy. The overarching theme in these sessions is the improvement of checkpoint inhibitor-based immunotherapy and a new flavour of synthetic lethality in molecularly pre-defined solid tumours.
Two studies explore molecular divergence in gastric cancer
Genomic landscaping suggests molecular divergence between cancer subtypes and across disease stages, but molecular similarities between White and Asian populations