An international team of researchers has developed a new technology to predict cancer patients’ response to immunotherapy, the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Technion researchers and other researchers from Israel, the United States and Germany discovered that a specific type of neutrophils in the bloodstream acts directly on the immune system and stimulates them to target the tumor, and their presence in the tumor prompts greater sensitivity to immunotherapy treatment.
The researchers tested these findings on patients with lung cancer and melanoma. The results are consistent with the analysis of existing data on 1,237 cancer patients who underwent immunotherapy treatments, showing that the neutrophils can predict the outcomes of immunotherapy with a higher degree of precision.
Unlike traditional chemotherapy, immunotherapy enhances the immune system to identify and combat cancer cells autonomously. However, tumors can deceive the immune system, emphasizing the need for biomarkers predicting treatment success.
Current biomarker methods involve invasive biopsies and offer limited predictive capability.
The Technion team said that their findings are expected to streamline the process of matching an immunotherapy treatment to a specific patient. The study has been published in the journal Cancer Cell.
