Eytan Ruppin, Chief of the Cancer Data Science Laboratory, shared a post on X:
“Can a blood test read the spatial organization of a tumor?
In a recent Nature study, Zhang et al. (Wubing Zhang, Aaron Newman Lab) introduced Liquid EcoTyper, which infers spatial tumor ecotypes from cfDNA methylation, associated with immunotherapy benefit in melanoma.
The inferred ecotypes outperformed cfDNA burden, TMB, and PD-L1 as predictors of outcome.
Our Cell Research Highlight, by Tiangen Chang and Eldad Shulman, discusses the study and its implications.
The key idea: blood can’t reveal where cells sit inside a tumor, but it may still carry enough information about the tumor ecosystem to help guide treatment.
The biggest opportunity may be monitoring tumors over time.
Repeated blood tests could reveal the tumor ecosystem shifting from immune-cold to immune-hot, or resistance emerging, before it appears on imaging.”
Title: Liquid surrogates of spatial tumor ecosystems
Authors: Tian-Gen Chang, Eldad D. Shulman, Eytan Ruppin
Other articles featuring Eytan Ruppin on OncoDaily.
