UCLA researchers have developed a promising method to assess how changes in a person’s immune response can help predict the effectiveness of a new immunotherapy in people with glioblastoma, the most common and deadly type of brain cancer.
The average life expectancy for people with glioblastoma who are prescribed a conventional therapy such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy ranges from 12 to 24 months. The poor outcomes highlight the urgent need for new treatments, and oncologists have so far been unable to predict who will likely benefit from immunotherapy.
Led by Dr. Robert Prins and Dr. Linda Liau, both members of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the two-year study, published online in the journal Cancer Immunology Research, implemented an advanced T-cell receptor sequencing technology to investigate immune responses in people with glioblastoma, before and after being treated with a personalized cellular immune therapy of autologous tumor lysate pulsed dendritic-cell vaccination.
Read the full news release.