Yan Leyfman, Medical Oncologist, Co-Founder and Executive Director of MedNews Week, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Why do some patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma achieve durable remissions after CAR-T therapy while others do not?
A new study suggests the answer may partially lie not within the tumor cells themselves, but within the tumor vasculature.
Researchers analyzed pretreatment lymphoma biopsies using cyclic immunofluorescence and machine learning to study adhesion molecules on intratumoral endothelial cells – the ‘road signs‘ that help T cells traffic into tumors. Patients who responded to CAR-T therapy showed increased expression of VCAM-1 and E-selectin on tumor-associated blood vessels, along with corresponding T-cell adhesion receptor expression.
In other words, responders appeared to have a microenvironment more permissive to T-cell homing and infiltration before CAR-T cells were ever infused.
Interestingly, ICAM-1 expression on high endothelial venules was decreased among responders, underscoring how nuanced the vascular immune landscape may be.
This pilot study raises an important possibility: the success of CAR-T therapy may depend not only on the engineered T cells, but also on whether the tumor microenvironment is biologically prepared to welcome them in.”
Title: Vascular phenotype as predictive markers of CART cell therapy response in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
Authors: Zuzana Tobiasova , Anuj Verma , Samuel T. Liburd, Iris Isufi , Jordan S. Pober, Mina L. Xu
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