PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers

NIH trial shows new form of TIL therapy effective against colon, rectum, pancreas, and bile duct tumors

Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers
2025-04-01
(Press-News.org) A new form of tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, a form of personalized cancer immunotherapy, dramatically improved the treatment’s effectiveness in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers, according to results of a clinical trial led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings, published April 1, 2025 in Nature Medicine, offer hope that this therapy could be used to treat a variety of solid tumors, which has so far eluded researchers developing cell-based therapies.

This form of therapy involves identifying and selecting immune cells (TILs) that are found in the tumor that specifically recognize and attack a patient’s tumor cells. Next, scientists grow those TILs into large quantities in the laboratory before they are finally administered to the patient.

Patients in the clinical trial, who had a variety of gastrointestinal tumors, also received the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to help further boost their immune response. The result was nearly 24% of patients treated with selected TILs plus pembrolizumab had a substantial reduction in the size of their tumors, compared with 7.7% of patients who received selected TILs without pembrolizumab. Patients treated with TILs that had not been selected for anti-tumor activity had no tumor shrinkage.

“We're seeing the first extension of cellular therapy with TILs into the common solid cancers,” said Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s lead investigator at NIH’s National Cancer Institute. “We see a little crack in the solid wall of cancer by using cell-based immunotherapy for the common solid cancers, and we think we have ways to open that crack even further.”

The clinical trial included 91 patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers—including esophageal, stomach, pancreatic, colon, and rectal cancers—that had worsened despite a median of four prior treatment regimens. In the pilot phase of the trial, 18 patients were treated with TILs that had not been selected for anti-tumor activity, and there were no objective responses (tumor shrinkage of at least 30% is considered an objective response). In the second phase, 39 patients were treated with selected TIL therapy, and three (7.7%) had objective responses.

In the third phase, 34 patients received pembrolizumab immediately before selected TIL therapy to prevent the newly introduced immune cells from becoming inactivated by the patient’s own immune system. This group had the best response, with 8 of 34 (23.5%) patients experiencing an objective response. All 91 patients had also received standard chemotherapy and high-dose interleukin-2 before the TIL therapy.

In the trial’s second and third phases, objective responses were seen in multiple types of gastrointestinal cancers, including cancers of the colon, rectum, pancreas, and bile duct. Responses lasted between 8 months and more than 5.8 years in the group that received selected TIL therapy alone, and between 4 months and 3.5 years in the group that received selected TIL therapy and pembrolizumab. Serious side effects occurred in 30% of patients treated with selected TILs.

The researchers are now developing methods to identify TILs that recognize multiple, specific proteins within a tumor, known as neoantigens, to help increase the number of patients who respond to selected TIL therapy with pembrolizumab.

TIL therapy, developed in the late 1980s by Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues at NIH, uses an individual’s own TILs to fight their tumor cells. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first TIL therapy for a solid cancer, lifileucel (Amtagvi), for treating advanced melanoma.

The new study was co-led by Dr. Rosenberg and NCI investigators Frank J. Lowery, Ph.D., and Stephanie L. Goff, M.D.

###

About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of people with cancer. NCI supports a wide range of cancer research and training extramurally through grants and contracts. NCI’s intramural research program conducts innovative, transdisciplinary basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research on the causes of cancer, avenues for prevention, risk prediction, early detection, and treatment, including research at the NIH Clinical Center—the world’s largest research hospital. Learn more about the intramural research done in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCI’s contact center at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit nih.gov.

END


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Newborn warty birch caterpillars defend the world’s smallest territory

2025-04-01
Real estate is precious. Some creatures defend territories extending over several kilometres, but when Jayne Yack (Carleton University, Canada) encountered miniature newborn warty birch caterpillars (Falcaria bilineata) she wondered if she might have discovered one of the world’s smallest, and youngest, territorial critters. ‘We had noticed that tiny warty birch caterpillars produced vibrations’, says Yack, who first encountered the feisty little creatures in 2008. She also noticed that the tiny caterpillars – 1 to 2 mm long – reside in solitude on birch leaves, making her speculate whether they ...

Exposure to air pollution in childhood is associated with reduced brain connectivity

2025-04-01
A new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, has found that children exposed to higher levels of air pollution in early and mid childhood have weaker connections between key brain regions. The findings, published in Environment International, highlight the potential impact of early exposure to air pollution on brain development. The research showed reduced functional connectivity within and between certain cortical and subcortical brain networks. These networks are systems of interconnected brain structures that work together to perform different cognitive functions, such as thinking, perceiving and controlling ...

Researchers develop test using machine learning to help predict immunotherapy response in lymphoma patients

2025-04-01
LOS ANGELES — Researchers with City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, with its National Medical Center in Los Angeles ranked among the nation’s top 5 cancer centers by U.S. News & World Report, and MSK have created a tool that uses machine learning to assess a non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) patient’s likely response to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy before starting the treatment, according to study results published today in Nature Medicine. CAR T cell therapy ...

New UNSW research reveals dramatically higher loss of GDP under 4°C warming

2025-04-01
New projections by the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response (ICRR) reveal a 4°C rise in global temperatures would cut world GDP by around 40% by 2100 – a stark increase from previous estimates of around 11%.  The recently-published analysis fixes an oversight in the current economic model underpinning global climate policy, toppling previous carbon benchmarks.  The results support limiting global warming to 1.7 °C, which is in line with significantly faster decarbonisation goals like the Paris Agreement, and far lower than the 2.7°C supported ...

Discovery of Quina technology challenges view of ancient human development in East Asia

2025-03-31
While the Middle Paleolithic period is viewed as a dynamic time in European and African history, it is commonly considered a static period in East Asia. New research from the University of Washington challenges that perception. Researchers discovered a complete Quina technological system — a method for making a set of tools — in the Longtan site in southwest China, which has been dated to about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Quina technology was found in Europe decades ago but has never before been found in East Asia. The team published its findings March ...

Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon

Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon
2025-03-31
Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon.  #### Article URL: https://plos.io/4c9g5gm Article Title: Evolution of canonical circadian clock genes underlies unique sleep strategies of marine mammals for secondary aquatic adaptation Author Countries: China Funding: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development (R&D) Program of China (grant no. 2022YFF1301600) to G.Y. & S.X., the Key Project ...

A new clue to how multicellular life may have evolved

A new clue to how multicellular life may have evolved
2025-03-31
Life emerged on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. The “primordial soup theory” proposes that chemicals floating in pools of water, in the presence of sunlight and electrical discharge, spontaneously formed organic molecules. These building blocks of life underwent chemical reactions, likely driven by RNA, eventually leading to the formation of single cells. But what sparked single cells to assemble into more complex, multicellular life forms? Nature Physics published a new insight about a possible driver of this key step in evolution — the fluid ...

ALL ALS consortium launches website to advance ALS research

2025-03-31
ALL ALS Consortium Launches Website to Advance ALS Research The Access for All in ALS (ALL ALS) Consortium announced the launch of its official website, creating a central hub for information about its initiatives and clinical research studies. ALL-ALS.org is designed to inform and engage researchers, clinicians, and current and prospective study participants. The ALL ALS Consortium formed in fall 2023 with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The consortium consists of 35 clinical sites in the United States and Puerto Rico, led by researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona and Massachusetts ...

Many TB cases may have gone undetected in prisons in Europe and the Americas during COVID-19

2025-03-31
EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:30 P.M. EST on Monday, March 31, 2025 Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu  Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu  ##  Many TB Cases May Have Gone Undetected in Prisons in Europe and the Americas During COVID-19 A new study found that reported diagnoses for tuberculosis were consistently lower than expected throughout the pandemic, even though incarceration rates remained largely consistent and TB detection among the general population managed to reverse after an early-pandemic decline.  Incarcerated populations have a high risk of developing tuberculosis ...

Predicting older people’s frailty helps doctors intervene earlier

Predicting older people’s frailty helps doctors intervene earlier
2025-03-31
UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00.01 AM BST ON TUESDAY 1 APRIL The new Electronic Frailty Index 2 (eFI2) is now available to 60% of England’s GPs thanks to research funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) and conducted by researchers at the University of Leeds and UCL  GP data on 36 health problems such as dementia, falls and fractures will help medical professionals to more accurately identify older people’s frailty and intervene earlier  Interventions may include a holistic assessment and treatment plan, falls prevention, targeted medicines review, and resistance exercise ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Melodies of musical ‘starquakes’ shed new light on how our galaxy formed

Protective radar for bacteria

Increased utilization of overtime and agency nurses and patient safety

Spending on glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists among US adults

Early-life ozone exposure and asthma and wheeze in children

Early Earth's first crust composition discovery rewrites geological timeline

Dark diversity reveals global impoverishment of natural vegetation

Study finds rates of breast and colorectal cancer screening nearly four-fold higher than lung cancer screening among those eligible

Sound frequencies of stars sing of our galaxy’s past and future

Tomato plants delay shoot meristem maturation to achieve heat-stress resilience

KTU researchers explore using soil for heat storage

Sociology leaders rally in support of academia, urge protection of free inquiry and research

Exploring AI’s role in decarbonizing the chemical industry: A multi-scale perspective

A review on structured magnetic soft robots: Locomotion innovation driven by structural engineering

NCCN 2025 Annual Conference illustrates the critical impact of cancer research on improving lives

NSD2 gene drives cancer cell identity in multiple myeloma

From octopus intelligence to smart artificial blood vessels: 2025 Schmidt Science Fellows to break new ground with interdisciplinary research

Experts challenge aspirin guidelines based on their undue reliance on a flawed trial

McGill discovery sheds new light on autism, intellectual disabilities

Cellular changes occur even below the hexavalent chromium limit

Study suggests a new way to curb social media’s body image toll

Plant doctor: An AI system that watches over urban trees without touching a leaf

Study tracks chromium chemistry in irradiated molten salts

Scientists: the beautiful game is a silver bullet for global health

Being physically active, even just a couple of days a week, may be key to better health

High-fat diet promote breast cancer metastasis in animal models

A router for photons

Nurses and AI collaborate to save lives, reduce hospital stays

Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model

Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection

[Press-News.org] Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers
NIH trial shows new form of TIL therapy effective against colon, rectum, pancreas, and bile duct tumors