Publications by authors named "Molinero L"

Background: Combining PARP inhibitors (PARPis) with immune checkpoint inhibitors may improve clinical outcomes in selected cancers. We evaluated rucaparib and atezolizumab in advanced gynaecological or triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Methods: After identifying the recommended dose, patients with PARPi-naive BRCA-mutated or homologous recombination-deficient/loss-of-heterozygosity-high platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer or TNBC received rucaparib plus atezolizumab.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of tiragolumab (anti-TIGIT) combined with atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1) as a treatment for PD-L1-positive persistent or recurrent cervical cancer in patients who had already undergone one or two chemotherapy treatments.
  • - In a phase II trial involving 171 patients, the combination treatment showed an objective response rate of 19.0%, which was not statistically significant against a predefined historical reference, indicating limited effectiveness.
  • - While both treatment groups had low progression-free survival rates (2.8 months for the combination therapy and 1.9 months for atezolizumab alone), the median overall survival was slightly better for the combination group at 11
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Objective: Histopathologic characteristics after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) may correlate with outcome. This study evaluates histopathologic features after immunotherapy and NACT/bevacizumab, and associated clinical outcomes.

Methods: Evaluable tissue from IMagyn050/GOG3015/ENGOT-ov39 patients from prespecified anatomic sites from interval cytoreductive surgery (ICS) after NACT/bevacizumab plus atezolizumab/placebo underwent central histopathologic scoring and analyzed with clinical outcomes.

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Cancer immunotherapy has transformed the clinical approach to patients with malignancies, as profound benefits can be seen in a subset of patients. To identify this subset, biomarker analyses increasingly focus on phenotypic and functional evaluation of the tumor microenvironment to determine if density, spatial distribution, and cellular composition of immune cell infiltrates can provide prognostic and/or predictive information. Attempts have been made to develop standardized methods to evaluate immune infiltrates in the routine assessment of certain tumor types; however, broad adoption of this approach in clinical decision-making is still missing.

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Objective: To determine the impact on overall survival (OS) and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) of combining atezolizumab with standard therapy for newly diagnosed stage III/IV ovarian cancer.

Methods: The placebo-controlled double-blind randomized phase III IMagyn050/GOG 3015/ENGOT-OV39 trial (NCT03038100) assigned eligible patients to 3-weekly atezolizumab 1200 mg or placebo for 22 cycles with platinum-based chemotherapy and bevacizumab. Coprimary endpoints were progression-free survival (already reported) and OS in the PD-L1-positive and intent-to-treat (ITT) populations, tested hierarchically.

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Article Synopsis
  • Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) like atezolizumab are effective cancer treatments, but many patients still face therapeutic resistance.
  • High levels of interleukin 6 (IL-6) correlate with a poor response to atezolizumab in advanced cancers, indicating a potential target for overcoming resistance.
  • Combining PD-L1 blockade with IL-6 receptor inhibition shows promising results in preclinical studies by enhancing the effectiveness of anti-tumor immune responses, suggesting IL-6 signaling inhibitors could improve ICI therapies in cancer patients.
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  • The study aimed to evaluate if patients with BRCA1/2-mutated or homologous recombination deficient (HRD) ovarian cancers benefited from the immune therapy atezolizumab in the phase III IMagyn050 trial.
  • Out of evaluated samples, 22% had BRCA1/2 mutations, and 46% were HRD, with most tumors showing low tumor mutation burden (TMB), and progression-free survival (PFS) was better in BRCA2-mutated and HRD tumors.
  • The trial concluded that neither BRCA1/2 mutation nor HRD provided significant advantages from atezolizumab, indicating low TMB levels and suggesting that genomic instability does not enhance sensitivity to immune checkpoint inhibitors
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Pathological and genomic profiling have transformed breast cancer care by matching patients to targeted treatments. However, tumors evolve and evade therapeutic interventions often through the acquisition of genomic mutations. Here we examine patients profiled with tissue (TBx) and liquid biopsy (LBx) as part of routine clinical care, to characterize the tumor evolutionary landscape and identify potential vulnerabilities in the relapsed setting.

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Purpose: To examine the overlap of homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) and microsatellite instability high (MSI-H) status, and to dissect driver versus bystander status of mutations () in this context.

Methods: A pan-cancer comprehensive genomic profiling cohort (n = 213,199) was examined for overlap between and MSI-H status. variant zygosity was examined and correlated with MSI-H status, tumor mutational burden, and genome-wide loss of heterozygosity (gLOH).

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Objectives: Epigenomic alterations in cancer interact with the immune microenvironment to dictate tumour evolution and therapeutic response. We aimed to study the regulation of the tumour immune microenvironment through epigenetic alternate promoter use in gastric cancer and to expand our findings to other gastrointestinal tumours.

Design: Alternate promoter burden (APB) was quantified using a novel bioinformatic algorithm () to infer promoter activity from short-read RNA sequencing and samples categorised into APB, APB and APB Single-cell RNA sequencing was performed to analyse the intratumour immune microenvironment.

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Background: Guidelines recommend atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel (A + nP) for first-line treatment of unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer expressing programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) on tumor-infiltrating immune cells (IC), based on IMpassion130. We report the final overall survival (OS) and safety of that study as per the prespecified analysis plan.

Patients And Methods: Patients were randomized to nP 100 mg/m (days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle) with atezolizumab 840 mg (A + nP) or placebo (P + nP; days 1 and 15), until progression or unacceptable toxicity.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis lead to durable clinical responses in subsets of cancer patients across multiple indications, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), urothelial carcinoma (UC) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Herein, we complement PD-L1 immunohistochemistry (IHC) and tumor mutation burden (TMB) with RNA-seq in 366 patients to identify unifying and indication-specific molecular profiles that can predict response to checkpoint blockade across these tumor types. Multiple machine learning approaches failed to identify a baseline transcriptional signature highly predictive of response across these indications.

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Background: Despite advances, there continues to be unmet need in breast cancer. Combining anti-programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) cancer immunotherapy atezolizumab with other targeted therapies may enhance T-cell-dependent cytolytic antitumor activity.

Methods: This open-label, phase Ib study evaluated the safety of atezolizumab-based combinations with antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity or antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) agents.

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Background: In the phase III IMpassion130 study, atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel (A+nP) showed clinical benefit in advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer patients who were programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1)+ (tumor-infiltrating immune cells [IC] ≥1%) using the SP142 immunohistochemistry assay. Here we evaluate 2 other PD-L1 assays for analytical concordance with SP142 and patient-associated clinical outcomes.

Methods: Samples from 614 patients (68.

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Purpose: To evaluate the addition of the humanized monoclonal antiprogrammed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) antibody, atezolizumab, to platinum-based chemotherapy and bevacizumab in newly diagnosed stage III or IV ovarian cancer (OC).

Methods: This multicenter placebo-controlled double-blind randomized phase III trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03038100) enrolled patients with newly diagnosed untreated International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage III or IV OC who either had undergone primary cytoreductive surgery with macroscopic residual disease or were planned to receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy and interval surgery.

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Background: Understanding the impact of the tumor immune microenvironment and BRCA1/2-related DNA repair deficiencies on the clinical activity of immune checkpoint inhibitors may help optimize both patient and treatment selection in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. In this substudy from the phase 3 IMpassion130 trial, immune biomarkers and BRCA1/2 alterations were evaluated for association with clinical benefit with atezolizumab and nab-paclitaxel (A+nP) vs placebo and nP in unresectable (P+nP) locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Methods: Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to nab-paclitaxel 100 mg/m2 (days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle) and atezolizumab 840 mg every 2 weeks or placebo until progression or toxicity.

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Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are gaining considerable traction within the liquid biopsy arena, as carriers of information from cells in distant sites that may not be accessible for biopsy. Therefore, there is a need to develop methods to enrich for specific EV subtypes, based on their cells of origin. Here we describe the development of an automated method to enrich tumor-derived EVs from plasma using the CellSearch technology compared to Total EVs isolated using differential ultracentrifugation (DUC).

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Article Synopsis
  • - Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC) is a highly aggressive form of breast cancer, and the presence of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) on immune cells has been linked to better outcomes when treated with atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel.
  • - A study evaluated PD-L1 prevalence in 670 metastasis-confirmed TNBC cases, finding that PD-L1 was more common on immune cells (46%) compared to tumor cells, with varying rates of prevalence depending on the anatomic location of the metastases.
  • - The analysis showed high agreement in PD-L1 status between matched samples from the same patient, suggesting that both the location of the metastases and the
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Background: Preferred neoadjuvant regimens for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) include anthracycline-cyclophosphamide and taxane-based chemotherapy. IMpassion031 compared efficacy and safety of atezolizumab versus placebo combined with nab-paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin plus cyclophosphamide as neoadjuvant treatment for early-stage TNBC.

Methods: This double-blind, randomised, phase 3 study enrolled patients in 75 academic and community sites in 13 countries.

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Purpose: Atezolizumab has shown antitumor activity in patients with ovarian cancer. Dual blockade of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and VEGF enhances anticancer immunity and augments antitumor activity in several cancers. The safety and efficacy of atezolizumab plus bevacizumab were evaluated in patients with ovarian cancer.

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Background: Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) protein is expressed in various cancers, including small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Atezolizumab inhibits PD-L1 signaling, thus restoring tumor-specific T-cell immunity. Here, we report results from the first-in-human phase 1 PCD4989g study (NCT01375842) of atezolizumab, in a cohort of patients with relapsed/refractory SCLC.

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Background: Immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy has shown promising efficacy across many different tumour types. We report the prespecified second interim overall survival analysis of the phase 3 IMpassion130 study assessing the efficacy and safety of atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel in patients with unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Methods: In this randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase 3 trial, done in 246 academic centres and community oncology practices in 41 countries, patients aged 18 years or older, with previously untreated, histologically documented, locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0 or 1 were eligible.

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Background: Metastatic TNBC (mTNBC) has a poor prognosis and few treatment options. The anti-PD-L1 antibody atezolizumab demonstrated clinical activity in mTNBC patients with PD-L1-positive tumor-infiltrating immune cells. The current study describes the tumor immune microenvironment (TiME) and genomic evolution across sequential therapies in a patient with a 31-year history of TNBC and a complete response (CR) to atezolizumab monotherapy.

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