Russian researchers have developed a test platform to predict the effectiveness of immunotherapy for skin cancer in individual patients.
The method forecasts how a patient’s tumour will respond to treatment by measuring changes in the luminescence of lymphocytes extracted from blood samples when exposed to immunotherapy.
“The method will help avoid prescribing expensive therapy to patients who are unlikely to respond. It will spare patients the burden and wasted time of ineffective treatment, promote rational use of resources and improve patient survival,” said Diana Yuzhakova, a senior researcher at the Privolzhsky Research Medical University in Nizhny Novgorod.
To assess therapy effectiveness, the platform requires only a blood sample: lymphocytes are isolated and placed in an immunotherapy medium that increases immune cell aggressiveness and prevents the cancer from suppressing their activity.
When immunotherapy successfully activates lymphocytes, their activity increases sharply, leading to a rise in intracellular NADPH coenzyme concentration. This increase can be detected and measured by tracking the luminescence produced by the free form of NADPH molecules, the scientists explained.
Using this approach, the researchers studied immune cell responses to immunotherapy in 22 skin cancer patients and conducted similar experiments on mouse lymphocytes. The measurements showed that monitoring NADPH coenzyme luminescence predicted immune response to therapy and treatment effectiveness with 95% accuracy.