Immunotherapy and Metastatic Breast Cancer

Cure-ious

Here's an interesting report (pre-clinical, ie in mice) that immunotherapy, when given in combination and before surgery, generates more abundant and potent cancer-specific T cell response and was an effective treatment for triple-negative breast cancer in 40-60% of the cases. Giving immuno before surgery could potentially be a game-changer, at least for TNBC...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-06/cancer-study-immunology-before-surgery-boost-survival-in-mice/8095214

Heidihill

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-06/cancer-study-immunology-before-surgery-boost-survival-in-mice/8095214

Making the link hot...

Heidihill

That is really interesting.

Cure-ious

So true! NY Times recently reported on how hard combination immunotherapy is, with serious side effects (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/health/immunotherapy-cancer.html ), so that part may not be changed in clinical trial, but the central idea that treating patients with immunotherapy is much more robust if the tumor still remains, presumably to instruct the immune cells, is the potentially big new finding.