Brandon Huffman: We still have a lot to learn why this largely viral-mediated cancer does not respond as well as we hope to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy

Brandon Huffman, Medical Oncologist in the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, shared an X post by James Cleary, Medical Oncologist in the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, adding:

”I am so glad to finally see this manuscript in print! This has been a work in progress since summer 2021 when I started as a senior fellow! We still have a lot to learn why this largely viral-mediated cancer does not respond as well as we hope to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy!”

Quoting James Cleary’s post:

”In our new paper, Brandon Huffman did a wonderful job examining PD1 immunotherapy in advanced Anal Cancer. Despite being an HPV driven cancer, with persistent viral antigen production, there is a wide range of responses to anti-PD1 immunotherapy. Read further.

Brandon Huffman found that many advanced Anal Cancer patients are resistant to PD1 immunotherapy and have a low number of tumor-associated CD8+PD1+ T cells. However, a small minority of anal cancer patients have long-term complete responses (>5 years) to PD1 immunotherapy.