Epitope spreading toward wild-type melanocyte-lineage antigens rescues suboptimal immune checkpoint blockade responses.

Although immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), such as anti-programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1), can deliver durable antitumor effects, most patients with cancer fail to respond. Recent studies suggest that ICI efficacy correlates with a higher load of tumor-specific neoantigens and development of vitiligo in patients with melanoma. Here, we report that patients with low melanoma neoantigen burdens who responded to ICI had tumors with higher expression of pigmentation-related genes.

A TLR7 agonist strengthens T and NK cell function during BRAF-targeted therapy in a preclinical melanoma model.

Therapeutic success of targeted therapy with BRAF inhibitors (BRAFi) for melanoma is limited by resistance development. Observations from preclinical mouse models and recent insights into the immunological effects caused by BRAFi give promise for future development of combination therapy for human melanoma. In our study, we used the transplantable D4M melanoma mouse model with the BRAF mutation and concomitant PTEN loss in order to characterize alterations in tumor-infiltrating effector immune cells when tumors become resistant to BRAFi.

Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) in melanoma: There's smoke, but is there fire?

Cancer stem cells (CSCs), also called Tumor Initiating Cells (TICs), can be defined as cancer cells that are present within solid tumors or hematological cancers, which have characteristics associated with normal stem cells, but which can give rise to all cell types found in a particular cancer sample. CSCs, therefore, are transformed stem cells, which can self-renew, differentiate into diverse progenies, and drive continuous tumor growth (Kreso & Dick, , Cell Stem Cell, 14:275-291; Schatton et al., , Nature, 451:345-349; Villani, Sabbatino, Ferrone, & Ferrone, , Melanoma Management, 2:109-114; Zhou et al.