Mega Doctor News
by Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Newswise – Immunotherapy has become a standard of care in treating high-risk, early-stage breast cancers, yet it has had limited success in shrinking tumors. New biomarkers that can improve outcomes for patients are urgently needed.
Now, a study led by researchers at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has found that repeated blood sampling — essentially, a liquid biopsy — can assess and predict the evolving antitumor immune response to therapy.
This minimally invasive and cost-effective alternative to tissue biopsy offers “an accessible tool for tailoring treatment strategies in breast cancer,” they reported April 22 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The researchers performed RNA sequencing on 546 peripheral blood samples from 160 patients with high-risk, stages 2 or 3 breast cancers negative for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) during treatment with either chemotherapy alone or in combination with immunotherapy.
Justin Balko, PhD, PharmD, professor of Medicine and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt Health and the paper’s corresponding author, acknowledged several co-authors — investigators from the nationwide I-SPY2 clinical trial — who, among other contributions to the study, provided the blood samples.
