The Lung Cancer Channel is supported with funding from Johnson & Johnson (Gold) and Takeda (Gold).
VJOncology is an independent medical education platform. Supporters, including channel supporters, have no influence over the production of content. The levels of sponsorship listed are reflective of the amount of funding given to support the channel.
WCLC 2025 | Spatial immune dynamics in NSCLC after dual ICI or ICI-chemotherapy
Natalie Vokes, MD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, comments on findings from an imaging mass cytometry analysis of tumor samples from patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with dual immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) or checkpoint inhibitors plus chemotherapy. Distinct immune and spatial patterns were observed across regimens, including higher regulatory T-cell infiltration and epithelial cell persistence after dual blockade, and broader immune cell infiltration with chemotherapy combinations. Differences in cell-cell interactions highlight how treatment-specific tumor microenvironment changes may shape therapeutic response and disease progression. This interview took place at 2025 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Barcelona, Spain.
These works are owned by Magdalen Medical Publishing (MMP) and are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All rights are reserved.
Transcript
One of the other challenges, a little bit related to what I was saying with treatment selection is how do we understand the mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy? And we’ve had a lot of studies that have looked at pre-treatment specimens. We’ve had fewer studies that have looked at how the tumor immune microenvironment has changed after treatment and what does resistance look like? So this is a cohort that we’ve built where we’ve done immune mass cytometry to look at the tumor microenvironment in the post-treatment specimens, and then we can compare that phenotype to the pre-treatment...
One of the other challenges, a little bit related to what I was saying with treatment selection is how do we understand the mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy? And we’ve had a lot of studies that have looked at pre-treatment specimens. We’ve had fewer studies that have looked at how the tumor immune microenvironment has changed after treatment and what does resistance look like? So this is a cohort that we’ve built where we’ve done immune mass cytometry to look at the tumor microenvironment in the post-treatment specimens, and then we can compare that phenotype to the pre-treatment. We also have a lot of dual IO-treated patients in that cohort, so we can look at the effects of the combination therapy and with a smaller subset of patients with chemotherapy. So with all of that being said, what we see in the dual IO-treated patients is that even in the resistance specimens, there is some tumor immune architecture that’s preserved. In the chemo specimens, the IO chemo, it looks like there’s more infiltration of the tumor immune microenvironment, less of this kind of immune architectural phenotype. And the signal for an immune response in those tumors is less clear. So we definitely see different resistance phenotypes after a dual immune checkpoint blockade than what we’re seeing after IO monotherapy.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
Read more...
