2018
June
Playing the blame game with cytokine release syndrome
June 27, 2018
CAR T cell therapy has proven to be an effective treatment for B cell malignancies, but treatment is often complicated by cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a severe side effect (particularly in patients with high tumor burden) that causes fever, hypotension, respiratory insufficiency, and potentially death due to spiking levels of serum cytokines. Moreover...
Neoepitope-reactive T cells achieve complete tumor regression in metastatic breast cancer
June 20, 2018
In a paper recently published in Nature Medicine, Zacharakis et al. report the case of a 49-year-old woman with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, refractory to multiple lines of chemotherapy, who was enrolled in a phase II clinical trial that evaluated the efficacy of autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in reducing tumor...
Liver cancer, immunity, and the microbiome: connecting the dots
June 13, 2018
The gut microbiome has recently emerged as a critical regulator of antitumor immunity. Nearby, the liver is supplied by blood largely from the intestines, meaning that it is directly exposed to the runoff of metabolites and other products of the microbiome. Noting this direct physical relationship, Ma et al. set out to determine...
The many faces of an exhausted T cell
June 6, 2018
Chronic diseases, such as HIV and cancer, are typically associated with an “exhausted” class of T cells characterized by poor function in disease control. Based on the hypothesis that a better understanding of the phenotypic variation among exhausted T cells may more effectively guide immunotherapy approaches, Bengsch et al. set out to systematically...
