Publications by authors named "G Zeitoun"
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to evaluate the Immunoscore (IS) as a potential biomarker for patients with rectal cancer managed by a watch-and-wait (W&W) strategy, focusing on predicting recurrence after treatment.
- It involved 249 patients and analyzed the presence of specific immune cells in pre-treatment biopsies, finding that higher IS scores were associated with better 5-year recurrence-free rates.
- The results indicate that IS is a strong independent predictor of time to recurrence and improves the accuracy of clinical models in assessing patient outcomes.
Because of the function and anatomical environment of the rectum, therapeutic strategies for local advanced rectal cancer (LARC) must deal with two challenging stressors that are a high-risk of local and distal recurrences and a high-risk of poor quality of life (QoL). Over the last three decades, advances in screening tests, therapies, and combined-modality treatment options and strategies have improved the prognosis of patients with LARC. However, owing to the heterogeneous nature of LARC and genetic status, the patient may not respond to a specific therapy and may be at increased risk of side-effects without the life-prolonging benefit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFour decades were needed to progress from the first demonstration of the independent prognostic value of lymphocytes infiltration in rectal cancers to the first recommendation from the international guidelines for the use of a standardized immune assay, namely the "Immunoscore" (IS), to accurately prognosticate colon cancers beyond the TNM-system. The standardization process included not only the IS conceptualization, development, fine-tuning, and validation by a large international consortium, but also a demonstration of the robustness and reproducibility across the world and testing of international norms and their effects on the IS. This is the first step of a major change of paradigm that now perceives cancer as the result of contradicting driving forces, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: No biomarker to personalize treatment in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) is currently available. We assessed in LARC whether a diagnostic biopsy-adapted immunoscore (IS) could predict response to neoadjuvant treatment (nT) and better define patients eligible to an organ preservation strategy ("Watch-and-Wait").
Experimental Design: Biopsies from two independent cohorts ( = 131, = 118) of patients with LARC treated with nT followed by radical surgery were immunostained for CD3 and CD8 T cells and quantified by digital pathology to determine IS.