Nick Salgia, MD-PhD student at the University at Buffalo & Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, shared on X:
“Great to see this fun side project from my 3rd year of med school Jacobs School at University at Buffalo, Roswell Park published in Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer with Jason Muhitch, Anurag Singh, Yu (Fuji) Fujiwara, etc, exploring impacts of SBRT on humoral immunity in mRCC.
Title: Stereotactic body radiation therapy enriches mediators of humoral immune activity in metastatic renal cell carcinoma
Authors: Nicholas J Salgia, Adil Khan, Yu Fujiwara, Mark Long, Gavin C Twoey, Kyle Leatt, Jacky Chow, Scott I Abrams, Thomas Schwaab, Anurag K Singh, Jason B Muhitch
Leveraging a cohort of patients with mRCC treated with single fraction 15Gy SBRT followed by nephrectomy 4 weeks later, we show:
Increased expression of B cell signaling pathways and -enriched class-switched antibody and plasma cell marker expression post-SBRT.
Ultimately, we link this class-switched memory/effector-like B cell phenotype back to ICB response in IMmotion151 and HCRN-GU16-260.
These findings add to prior work from Jacky Chow in the MuhitchLab showing that SBRT promotes antigenicity and cellular immune activity in the RCC TME and may be a viable immune preconditioning strategy prior to ICB.
While CYTOSHRINK did not demonstrate PFS benefit, we hypothesize that the sub-ablative dosing and treatment sequence (XRT after ICB induction) may have affected the outcome. Suffice it to say – we eagerly await SAMURAI Rana McKay!
A huge thank you to the MuhitchLab, Roswell Park Radiation Medicine/ Urology, great collaborators, and most importantly, the selfless patients who took part in this study!
Stay tuned for more work on B cells in RCC from us and Zachary Yochum, Zayd Tippu, + many others!
You can also read:
KEYNOTE-427: Long-Term Outcomes and Biomarker Analyses With 1L Pembrolizumab in Advanced RCC
