Editorial: Focus on malignant pleural mesothelioma immunology and immunotherapy

Our plain-English summary of Editorial: Focus on malignant pleural mesothelioma immunology and immunotherapy, by C. Porta, D. Jean, C. Blanquart (Frontiers in Immunology, 2023).

The study

• Authors: C. Porta, D. Jean, C. Blanquart
• Journal: Frontiers in Immunology
• Published: 2023;14:1251384
• Type of article: Editorial
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This article was an editorial, not a research study. The three authors introduced a collection of papers (a "Research Topic") in the journal Frontiers in Immunology on the immunology and immunotherapy of malignant pleural mesothelioma. They described this cancer of the lining of the lungs as causally associated with exposure to asbestos. The editorial did not study any patients or any asbestos exposure itself. The authors wrote that combination immunotherapy with anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 drugs had recently been approved. They added that many patients still did not respond or relapsed after a few months, so reliable markers to select patients and new treatment strategies were urgently needed. They then summarized the papers in the collection. These covered candidate markers of response to immunotherapy, some of which the authors said still needed further investigation and validation. They also covered computer-based tumor classification systems, a link between a high blood eosinophil count and worse outcome, tumor microbes linked to survival, radiotherapy experiments in cell lines, a mouse model, the protein osteopontin, and an early-phase trial of a virus given into the chest. Those findings belong to those papers, not to this editorial.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Editorial introducing a collection of research papers (Research Topic); not an original study
• Who was studied: No study population; the editorial discussed papers published in the Research Topic on malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM)
• Exposure: No exposure was studied. Asbestos was mentioned only as background: the authors described MPM as causally associated with asbestos exposure. The focus was immunotherapy, especially immune checkpoint blockade (anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1).
• Main results:
  • Other researchers' work, as described by the editorial (not this article's own result): Perrino et al. reviewed predictive biomarkers of response to immune checkpoint blockade in MPM. The editorial said newer candidate markers need further investigation and prospective validation.
  • Other researchers' finding, as described by the editorial: Willems et al. reported that a baseline blood absolute eosinophil count of 220 or more per microliter was correlated with worse outcome in MPM patients receiving chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
  • Other researchers' finding, as described by the editorial: Pentimalli et al. analyzed TCGA data on 86 MPM patients and identified 107 microbial genera signatures significantly associated with survival.
  • Other researchers' finding, as described by the editorial: Yang et al. built a machine learning-based 12-gene classifier that separated MPM into two immune-related subtypes.
  • Other researchers' finding, as described by the editorial: Digifico et al. found the protein osteopontin was more expressed in human MPM tumors than in normal pleural tissue.
  • Other researchers' study, as described by the editorial: Chintala et al. ran a phase I trial of oncolytic vaccinia virus given into the pleural space in a small group of MPM patients. The editorial described the treatment as safe and feasible.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors stated that, because many patients do not respond to or relapse after combination immunotherapy, there is an urgent need for reliable biomarkers to select patients for immune checkpoint blockade and for new strategies to boost anti-tumor immunity.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Pleural Mesothelioma, Immunotherapy.

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• Assessment of new HDAC inhibitors for immunotherapy of malignant pleural mesothelioma — D. Bensaid, T. Blondy, et al. (2018)
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