Identifying who will/won't benefit from checkpoint therapy

This research is hot off the presses and I don't imagine the procedure mentioned in it is widely known or maybe even usable yet. But I wanted to flag it here for anyone of us who is now or may be down the road considering checkpoint therapy, a type of immunotherapy. I plan to pack it away in case my own onc brings up checkpoint therapy down the road, so I can ask about the test mentioned here.

The team created a new way to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from a treatment known as checkpoint therapy, where drugs like pembrolizumab and nivolumab are used to dodge the barriers that some cancer cells use to evade the immune system. It's one of many ways that physicians are exploring the use of immunotherapy to spur the body's natural defenses to fight cancer.

Currently in endometrial cancer, physicians use a measurement known as tumor mutation burden to determine which patients are most likely to benefit. Based on the measurements of immune activity in this study, the scientists have proposed a new measure focused on a patient's antigen presentation machinery, known as the APM. The APM describes how well the body flags cancer cells and presents them to the body's immune system for destruction - a key function for checkpoint inhibitors to be effective.Better insight into exactly who would benefit from the drugs would allow physicians to avoid their use in patients who are unlikely to benefit, sparing those patients severe and unnecessary side effects.

Better insight into exactly who would benefit from the drugs would allow physicians to avoid their use in patients who are unlikely to benefit, sparing those patients severe and unnecessary side effects.

The article also mentions research into "a promising new way to identify tumors that are not currently classified as aggressive but which turn out to be just as invasive as serous tumors, which grow quickly and are more likely than other tumors to kill patients."

New, detailed molecular roadmap boosts fight against endometrial cancer