Editorial
Glenn Dranoff
Cancer Immunol Res October 1 2014 2 (10) 925-925; DOI:10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-14-0166
Ayyoub and colleagues show that MAGE-A expression occurs primarily in squamous tumors and is correlated with high tumor grade and poorer survival, whereas EGFR and KRAS mutations occur in adenocarcinomas but not in squamous tumors, with KRAS mutations associated with early-stage disease and better survival.
Chen and colleagues show in patients and in a mouse model of HER2+ breast cancer that abrogating immune suppression with low-dose cyclophosphamide along with administration of an allogeneic GM-CSF–secreting HER2+ tumor vaccine and trastuzumab weekly augmented HER2-specific T-cell responses and survival.
Norton, Olson, and colleagues found no differences in disease-free survival in trastuzumab-treated patients regardless of their FCGR2A and FCGR3A genotypes, but a significant difference between patients with FCGR2B variants, suggesting the functionality of FCGR2B may predict benefit to trastuzumab.
Pentcheva-Hoang and colleagues analyzed melanoma-specific T-cell dynamics in tumors and tumor-draining lymph nodes before and after immune checkpoint blockade, and their study demonstrates that successful immunotherapy correlates with greater T-cell motility and reversal of the T-cell paralysis in growing tumors.
A final report of trial S9035 by Carson and colleagues indicates a significant overall benefit from the lysed adjuvant vaccine melacrine for patients with stage II to IV melanoma with HLA A2 and/or HLA Cw3 serotypes, implicating interactions between HLA haplotype and clinical outcome.
McNeel and colleagues demonstrate that a transient increase in eosinophil counts following sipuleucel-T treatment was associated with therapy-induced immune responses and longer prostate cancer survival, suggesting this could be prospectively evaluated as a biomarker in clinical trials.
Curran and colleagues show that IL12p70 from human DCs induces NK-cell precursors to transition from KIR/NKG2A-negative to positive and become functionally active, providing a rationale for generating donor NK cells against missing KIR ligands to enhance the graft-versus-leukemia effect after allogeneic HSCT.
Young and colleagues demonstrate in syngeneic mouse models of colorectal and pancreatic cancers that TGFβ inhibition with the oral, small-molecule inhibitor SM16 enhanced adaptive immunity in the tumor microenvironments and significantly improved the efficacy of subsequent radiotherapy.