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TNBC: Distinct Tumor Immune Microenvironments at Metastatic Sites

— "Striking differences," says researcher

MedpageToday

A study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting examined the tumor immune microenvironments of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) at the primary and metastatic sites to investigate how the immune composition may affect the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors.

In this exclusive ֱ video, Yuan Yuan, MD, PhD, director of breast oncology at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center in Los Angeles, offers the background and hypothesis-generating findings of the .

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

We presented a poster looking at genomic profiling of triple-negative breast cancer, collaborating with Tempus Genomics.

So we looked at over 1,000 patients with a triple-negative breast cancer diagnosis who underwent standard care genomic sequencing through Tempus Platform, and comparing different sites of metastasis from the breast to liver to lymph nodes, lung and bones to understand the tumor microenvironment changes.

So the big background is that liver metastasis often, or bone, often indicating different prognosis. We have long observed patients with liver metastasis may do a little bit more poorly in the clinic. So we try to understand, in the immunotherapy era, what are the tumor microenvironment changes?

So we observed significant striking differences in comparing different sites of metastasis. The liver [metastasis] tend to have much more immune-cold tumor, have a higher macrophage percentage, lower B cell, lower CD4 and CD8 T cells. And also we have over 200 patients with ethnic background from African American. So we have that privilege to look into any race disparities and differences across different races.

And we do find some interesting -- provocative I would say -- hypothesis-generating findings in the African American population. The cell population seems to vary comparing with the white counterpart. So we'd like to carry this work back to our laboratory using our Cedar-Sinai retrospective dataset to confirm these findings. Stay tuned.

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    Greg Laub is the Senior Director of Video and currently leads the video and podcast production teams.