Can we use exosomes for immune monitoring?
One of the ongoing challenges with cancer immunotherapy is monitoring response to treatment.
Even if you are one of the minority of people who do respond to cancer immunotherapy, many responders go on to develop acquired resistance or experience immune escape resulting in a loss of response to therapy, which means we need to be able to detect what is happening in the immune system of a cancer patient in order then identify the next treatment option.
Could the proteins and nucleic acids carried by virus sized microvesicles called exosomes – present in their billions in blood plasma – provide insights into biomarkers of response to therapy and what is happening in the tumour?
Some people think they can, while others remain skeptical.
We think it’s cool area of research, worthy of consideration and following as we continue to explore various biopsy and blood/plasma approaches.
One person at the forefront of exosome research is Dr Theresa Whiteside from the University of Pittsburgh, where she’s a Professor of Pathology, Immunology and Otolaryngology.
At the recent 2018 annual meeting at AACR, she kindly spoke about her innovative work over the past year in what is now an exploding field of research…
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