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New ASCO 2025 | Midkine-mediated immune resistance in MCC and SCLC tumors
Curtis Perry, MD, PhD, Yale University, New Haven, CT, discusses the use of perturbational single-cell RNA sequencing (PERCEPT) to evaluate responses of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) tumors to immune stimulation. The cytokine midkine was identified as a key resistance factor, with its knockout restoring sensitivity to immune stimuli in tumors. This interview took place during the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Meeting in Chicago, IL.
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Transcript
On behalf of my co-authors, I really appreciate the chance to kind of describe our work, describing both the platform for being able to really understand patient tumors, for getting novel therapies and testing them prior to patients actually receiving them so we can better understand if they’re likely to respond or not respond and how might we help assist them in responding if they’re not...
On behalf of my co-authors, I really appreciate the chance to kind of describe our work, describing both the platform for being able to really understand patient tumors, for getting novel therapies and testing them prior to patients actually receiving them so we can better understand if they’re likely to respond or not respond and how might we help assist them in responding if they’re not. So we really focused on patients for whom tumors already have progressed after immunotherapy, so they’re immunotherapy resistant, and we wanted to figure out why and how we could overcome it. We identified a cytokine called Midkine, which we think is really important in suppressing immune responses, and we’re really excited about partnering in the future to try to block that inhibition and thus unleash the response to immunotherapy, particularly in small cell lung cancer and Merkel cell carcinoma.
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Disclosures
Research Funding – AstraZeneca (Inst)
