Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest malignancies, with a 5-year overall survival rate of only 13%. Earlier studies demonstrated that the Lister strain of oncolytic vaccinia virus (VVL) is capable of replicating and delivering therapeutic genes even under hypoxic conditions, highlighting its potential as a promising vector for targeting hypoxic tumors like pancreatic cancer.
CCR8 is highly expressed on immunosuppressive regulatory T cells (Tregs) in various solid tumors, making it a potential target to enhance antitumor immunity and the efficacy of cancer therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors. However, the impact of CCR8 expression on the Treg phenotype and its role in cancer progression remain unclear.
Current anticancer approaches, such as antibody or CAR T-cell therapies, rely on targeting tumor-associated antigens rather than tumor-specific antigens, with the consequent on-target, off-tumor effects.
Tumor immunotherapy has become a standard of care for treating various cancers, with immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-L1/PD-1 axis proving particularly effective. While PD-L1 expression on tumor cells is a predictive biomarker for therapeutic response, emerging evidence highlights the importance of PD-L1 expression on myeloid cells, such as monocytes and dendritic cells (DCs), in shaping the tumor microenvironment and influencing the success of checkpoint blockade.
A study has demonstrated the potential of a novel ligand-based CAR T-cell therapy for targeting CD7-positive T-cell malignancies, including T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) and T-cell lymphomas. The receptor CD7 is a prominent target antigen, being expressed in around 95% of T-ALL, 50% of peripheral T-cell lymphomas and 10% of acute myeloid leukemias.
Radiopharmaceuticals can offer a targeted approach for cancers that have limited therapeutical options. Abdera Therapeutics Inc. recently presented results of their novel 5T4-targeted radiopharmaceutical.
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), when overactive or overexpressed, may lead to tumor growth and spread, and is thus a robust target for therapy.
Traditional neoantigen prediction methods primarily rely on HLA-peptide binding databases, often producing false positives. This challenge highlights the need for improved strategies to identify truly immunogenic neoantigens. Neoantigen-based cancer vaccines have shown promising efficacy in recent clinical trials for treating solid tumors, offering a potential solution.
Both IL-15 and IL-2 are good options for cancer therapy, but IL-15 is considered superior due to lower vascular endothelial toxicity, stronger ability to expand natural killer and CD8+ T cells and weaker stimulation of T regulatory cells, but it has a short half-life and exerts severe adverse effects.
A recent study explored the therapeutic potential of hu128.1, a humanized antibody targeting transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1), in treating erythroleukemia using xenograft mouse models. The results demonstrate that hu128.1 exerts strong antitumor activity against human erythroleukemic (ERY-1) cells, highlighting its promise as a candidate for managing this aggressive cancer.