Posted on 03/21/2023 9:24:54 AM PDT by ConservativeMind
Cancer treatment routinely involves taking out lymph nodes near the tumor in case they contain metastatic cancer cells. But new findings from a clinical trial show that immunotherapy can activate tumor-fighting T cells in nearby lymph nodes.
"Immunotherapy is designed to jump start the immune response, but when we take out nearby lymph nodes before treatment, we're essentially removing the key locations where T cells live and can be activated," Spitzer said.
Rather than the immunotherapy pumping up the T cells in the tumor, he said, T cells in the lymph nodes are likely the source for T cells circulating in the blood. Such circulating cells can then go into the tumor and kill off the cancer cells.
The trial enrolled 12 patients whose tumors hadn't yet metastasized past the lymph nodes. Typically, such patients would undergo surgery to remove the tumor, followed by other treatments if recommended. Instead, patients received a single cycle of an immunotherapy drug called atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1). A week or two later, Spitzer's team measured how much the treatment activated the patients' immune systems.
The team found that, after immunotherapy, the cancer-killing T cells in the lymph nodes began springing into action.
They also found higher numbers of related immune cells in the patients' blood.
Another benefit of the study design was that it allowed researchers to compare how the treatment affected lymph nodes with and without metastases, or a second cancer growth.
It could be that the T cells in these metastatic nodes were less activated by the therapy, Spitzer said. If so, that could explain, in part, the poor performance of some immunotherapy treatments. Still, the therapy prompted enough T-cell activity in the metastatic lymph nodes to consider leaving them in for a short period of time until treatment ends.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I had ALL of the lymph nodes removed from my lower abdominal area during prostatectomy surgery. I didn’t know this would happen until afterwards. One of the first side effects was lymphedema, noticable swelling in one leg. It’s has improved since then, but I wish I would have been informed of this possibility.
During stomach cancer surgery as my stomach was removed and biopsied so were 15 abdominal lymph nodes. My Chemo was so strong and also so effective that no stage 3 cancer metastasizing cells remained anywhere. I knew they were going to do this and I don’t want to dispute the Sloan Kettering / MD Anderson SOP for something out of California.
BKMRK.
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