Researchers from Astrazeneca plc presented...

Antitumor immunotherapy has notched big wins, but in a small proportion of patients. And one possible explanation for why is that approved immunotherapies are not yet planting their flag on most of the battlefields where tumors and the immune system engage in combat. At the opening AACR 2023 plenary session, Ralph DeNardo celebrated the successes of the current, mostly T-cell-based approaches,  but also encouraged his colleagues to think more broadly about the antitumor immunity.

HER2 is a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor family that is overexpressed in approximately 20% of breast cancers. Trastuzumab, an anti-HER2 antibody discovered 25 years ago has become the standard of care treatment due to its beneficial results.

Researchers from Bright Peak Therapeutics AG presented the discovery and preclinical characterization of a novel first-in-class PD-1/interleukin-18 (IL-18) immunocytokine, BPT-567.

Expression of the tyrosine-protein phosphatase non-receptor type 22 (PTPN22) is restricted to hematopoietic cells where it serves critical functions in regulating T-cell signaling that have made PTPN22 the focus of potential future cancer immunotherapy.

Researchers from Astrazeneca plc described the development and preclinical evaluation of AZD-5335, a novel antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) consisting of folate receptor α (FR-α)-targeting antibody conjugated to a proprietary topoisomerase 1 inhibitor (TOP1i), being developed as a potential new therapeutic against ovarian cancer.

Heterogeneity, in both tumors and their microenvironment, limits the success of current cancer treatments. But it also provides opportunities. Heterogeneities “are not barriers to therapy, they are vulnerabilities to be exploited,” was how David DeNardo described his take at the 2023 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on Sunday.