Claire Lewis: Why do some cancer patients respond well to immunotherapy and others not?

Claire Lewis, Professor of Experimental Pathology at University of Sheffield, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent paper titled “Using a pan-cancer atlas to investigate tumour associated macrophages as regulators of immunotherapy response” published in the Nature journal.

Authors: Alexander Coulton, Jun Murai, Danwen Qian, Krupa Thakkar, Claire Lewis and Kevin Litchfield.  .

“Why do some cancer patients respond well to immunotherapy and others not?

Our new, collaborative study with Dr. Kevin Litchfield and colleagues in London highlights the presence of a ‘rogue’ subset of macrophages in tumours that respond poorly to immunotherapy. These cells express an array of collagen genes and resemble fibroblasts. Emerging data from other labs suggests that they inhibit CD8+ T cells in tumours – cells that are essential for the efficacy of most forms of immunotherapy.”

Ezra Cohen, Chief Medical Officer of Oncology at Tempus Labs, shared comments about the article on X:

“Remarkable work cataloguing the diversity and complexity of tumor associated macrophages. This will be a valuable tool in cancer immunotherapy.”

Source: Claire Lewis/LinkedIn and Ezra Cohen/X