Publications by authors named "Maartje Alkemade"
Purpose: Platinum-based chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors are key components of systemic treatment for muscle-invasive and advanced urothelial cancer. The ideal integration of these two treatment modalities remains unclear as clinical trials have led to inconsistent results. Modulation of the tumor-immune microenvironment by chemotherapy is poorly characterized.
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- Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) improves survival in Stage III ovarian cancer after surgery, but optimizing patient selection is crucial to enhance treatment effectiveness and reduce unnecessary interventions.
- A study analyzed RNA sequencing data from 147 patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer to identify biomarkers for HIPEC benefit, focusing on gene expression and tumor cell composition.
- The results suggested that the absence of macrophages and the presence of B cells in the tumor environment could predict HIPEC effectiveness, a finding supported by histological validation, indicating a need for further research on immune cell composition's role in treatment response.
Article Synopsis
- Microbial communities in the human body play a crucial role in regulating the immune system and responses to cancer treatments, with complex communities found within primary tumors.
- A comprehensive study involving 4,160 metastatic tumor biopsies revealed specific microbial patterns in different organs, higher levels of anaerobic bacteria in low-oxygen tumors, and links between microbial diversity and immune cell activity.
- The research also highlighted the role of certain bacteria, like Fusobacterium, in cancer resistance and showed how microbial communities change over time with treatment, creating valuable data for improving cancer treatment approaches.
Unlabelled: In prostate cancer, androgen receptor (AR)-targeting agents are very effective in various disease stages. However, therapy resistance inevitably occurs, and little is known about how tumor cells adapt to bypass AR suppression. Here, we performed integrative multiomics analyses on tissues isolated before and after 3 months of AR-targeting enzalutamide monotherapy from patients with high-risk prostate cancer enrolled in a neoadjuvant clinical trial.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe addition of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) with cisplatin to interval cytoreductive surgery improves recurrence-free (RFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with stage III ovarian cancer. Homologous recombination deficient (HRD) ovarian tumors are usually more platinum sensitive. Since hyperthermia impairs BRCA1/2 protein function, we hypothesized that HRD tumors respond best to treatment with HIPEC.
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