Transcriptome And Single Cell Sequencing Analyses To Classify Immune Subtypes Uncover Novel Biomarkers And Assess Immunotherapeutic Responses In Cancer

Transcriptome and Single-Cell Sequencing Analyses to Classify Immune Subtypes, Uncover Novel Biomarkers, and Assess Immunotherapeutic Responses in Cancer

According to the most recent projections of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), there would be around 19.3 million new cases of cancer and 10 million cancer-related deaths globally in 2022. Cancer research has never halted. In particular, research into the cancer immunological microenvironment is gaining popularity.

Identification of Biomarkers for Cancer Immunotherapy: From Bench to Bedside, volume I

During the past few decades, immunotherapy has become an established pillar of cancer treatment improving the survival of numerous patients with diverse solid and hematologic tumors. The leading causes behind the success are the discovery of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T/M/NK cells. As for ICIs, malignancies take advantage of the inhibitory programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death protein ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) or cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein (CTLA-4) pathways to evade the immune system, and disruption of the axis by immune checkpoint inhibitors can achieve durable disease remissions, which has been proved by basic researches and (pre-) clinical studies among lung cancer, melanoma, renal cell cancer, head, and neck squamous cell carcinoma, urothelial cancer, and Hodgkin’s disease. However, the 5-year survival rate of patients treated with ICIs varies with each individual and also relies on tumor specific pathological or molecular subtypes. Besides, the efficacy of ICIs is still limited in terms of drug resistance and fewer potential responders. Thus, there is a big challenge to identify and develop more novel reliable ICIs, as well as sensibilize existing ICIs for patients with drug resistance or even for non-responders.

Exploring the breast tumor microenvironment: Association to metastasis, novel risk factors and novel treatments and immunotherapies