“TEAM FRESH WIND” led by Dr. Satoko Matsueda has recently published a paper tittle as. “Successful ex vivo expansion of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes with systemic chemotherapy prior to surgical resection”
TILs have shown promising clinical outcomes in patients with various cancer types, including melanoma, gastrointestinal cancer, lung cancer, and head and neck cancer. However, a major obstacle in recruiting patients for immunotherapy clinical trials has been the requirement that patients did not receive systemic chemotherapy prior to tumor tissue resection. This limitation has denied many eligible cancer patients access to potentially life-saving treatments.
We sought to challenge the prevailing belief that chemotherapy before surgical resection would significantly interfere with the ex vivo expansion of TILs. By procuring tumor tissues from both treatment-naive cases and those that underwent chemotherapies, the researchers analyzed TILs from these distinct groups, with cancer indications ranging from colorectal to lung cancers, both in primary and metastatic sites.
Remarkably, our team successfully expanded TILs ex vivo, with an overall success rate of 90.9%. This finding provided evidence that TILs could indeed be generated and expanded from tumor tissues, even in cases where chemotherapy preceded surgical resection. Importantly, no significant phenotypic or functional differences were observed between the groups that received chemotherapy and those that did not. This breakthrough discovery implies that the exclusion of patients with a history of chemotherapy from TIL therapy trials may not be warranted, thus broadening treatment options for countless cancer patients.
Furthermore, the study delved into a particularly vital aspect of TIL therapy - the timeframe between chemotherapy administration and surgical resection. Our team demonstrated successful TIL generation and expansion from various tissue types of patients with colon cancer, even in cases where chemotherapy was administered as recently as 14 days before surgical resection. These post-chemotherapy TILs displayed phenotypes and functionalities comparable to those from treatment-naive TILs, indicating that the effects of chemotherapy did not significantly hinder their potential therapeutic value.
Notably, our team expanded their investigation beyond primary cancers, including metastatic cancers from multiple indications, such as liver and brain. We found that functional TILs could be expanded from both primary and metastatic sites regardless of the patients' history of chemotherapy prior to surgery. This significant discovery is an encouraging step towards extending the benefits of TIL therapy to cancer patients with metastasized tumors and those who have previously undergone chemotherapy.
The implications of this study are far-reaching! By allowing patients with a history of recent chemotherapy to enroll in TIL therapy trials, researchers and clinicians can cast a wider net to identify eligible candidates, thereby offering hope to a more diverse group of cancer patients. With TIL therapy showing remarkable success rates in various cancer types, this inclusive approach could mark a turning point in the fight against solid cancers.
Our study has provided a glimmer of hope for millions of cancer patients who had been previously denied the opportunity to explore TIL therapy due to a history of chemotherapy. As this research garners attention from the scientific community and stakeholders in the field of cancer research, there is newfound optimism that TIL therapy could be a game-changer in the quest to conquer solid cancers. The future of cancer treatment looks promising as scientists continue to break down barriers and strive to offer innovative therapies to all those in need.
GO TEAM FRESH WIND!!
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