Immunotherapy is a comparatively young approach for the treatment of cancer. It essentially revolves around the body’s immune system and provides strength for fighting against cancer cells. However, not all patients respond favourably to immunotherapy, making it ineffective in some circumstances. Choosing the correct cancer therapy is critical for every patient as it is a brutal disease, and there is very little time to waste. Immunotherapy is one of the options, but it is applicable only when some conditions are present. For instance, immune system T cells need to be present within the cancerous tumor for the approach to work.
A research team has successfully created a tool that might help change the statistics of immunotherapy applicability for cancer patients. The researchers discovered that they could estimate the fraction of T cells present within cancerous tumors by analyzing the DNA sequencing data received from patient’s cancerous tumors. The findings would be a massive contribution to the Cancer Diagnosis Market as it would raise the chance of immunotherapy working for a cancer patient.
DNA sequencing of cancerous tumor cells is performed rather frequently as it enables tracing the evolution of how individual tumors develop historically. The team has revealed that they could look back through the tumor’s evolutionary history. They have discovered that some signals that show the loss of T cell receptors excision circles require T cell maturation. This helped scientists know the number of T cells present in the tumor and would be able to fight cancerous cells if encouraged by immunotherapy.
It is essential to know the number of T cells that are present inside the tumor. This is because immunotherapy improves the ability of T cells to attack cancer cells. The greater the number of T cells present within the tumour, the more likely will cancer cells be killed. Checkpoint inhibitors are a type of immunotherapy responsible for removing obstacles encountered by T cells in killing cancer cells. However, it would not work if there were no T cells available.
Identifying T cell numbers through DNA sequencing allows patients to indulge in better predictive powers in repose to treatment without requiring any additional data. The process provided in the study does not need any extra time or cost beyond the standard DNA sequencing. The researchers have added that it needs to be developed further before the tool is available for clinical use. Once fully explored, it might even help treat other diseases as well, including cancer.