A key phenomenon in cancer is the establishment of a highly immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment (TME). Despite advances in immunotherapy, where the purpose is to induce tumour recognition and hence hereof tumour eradication, the majority of patients applicable for such treatment still fail to respond. It has been suggested that high immunological activity in the tumour is essential for achieving effective response to immunotherapy, which therefore have led to exploration of strategies that triggers inflammatory pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the molecular pathways driving the acute antiviral and inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical for developing treatments for severe COVID-19. Here, we find decreasing number of circulating plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) in COVID-19 patients early after symptom onset, correlating with disease severity. pDC depletion is transient and coincides with decreased expression of antiviral type I IFNα and of systemic inflammatory cytokines CXCL10 and IL-6.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) resistance is a major obstacle in treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). amplification drives resistance to EGFR-TKIs in 5-20% of initially sensitive.
Egfr: mutated NSCLC patients, and combined treatment with EGFR-TKIs and MET-TKIs can overcome this resistance.
Purpose: Checkpoint inhibitors have significantly improved treatment of metastatic melanoma. However, 40-60% of patients do not respond to therapy, emphasizing the need for better predictive biomarkers for treatment response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Prorammed death-ligand 1(PD-L1) expression in tumor cells is currently used as a predictive biomarker; however, it lacks specificity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Increased FGFR1 expression is associated with resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in EGFR-mutated NSCLC cells and often concomitant with epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). However, the cause-and-effect relationship between increased FGFR1 expression and EMT in the genetic background of EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells is not clear. Previous studies have specifically addressed the relationship between EMT and increased FGFR1 expression in the context of simultaneous TKI-mediated blocking of EGFR-signaling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNon-small cell lung carcinoma patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are offered EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) as first line treatment, but 20-40% of these patients do not respond. High expression of alternative receptor tyrosine kinases, such as Fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1), potentially mediates intrinsic EGFR TKI resistance. To study this in molecular detail, we used CRISPR-dCas9 Synergistic Activation Mediator (SAM) for up-regulation of FGFR1 in physiological relevant levels in the EGFR mutated NSCLC cell lines HCC827 and PC9 thereby generating HCC827 and PC9.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF