Immunotherapy for recurrent ovarian cancer: a further piece of the puzzle or a striking strategy?

INTRODUCTION: Treatment of ovarian cancer has been long standardized with the inclusion of surgery and chemotherapy based on platinum and taxanes, this strategy reaching high remission rates. However, when this treatment fails, further options are available with little benefit. Since ovarian cancer has specific immunologic features, actually immunotherapy is under evaluation to overcome treatment failure in patients experiencing recurrence. AREAS COVERED: Immunogenicity of ovarian cancer and its relationship with clinical outcomes is briefly reviewed. The kinds of immunotherapeutic strategies are summarized. The clinical trials investigating immunotherapy in recurrent ovarian cancer patients are reported. EXPERT OPINION: The results of these clinical trials about immunotherapy are interesting, but little clinical benefit has been achieved until now. For this reason, we could conclude that immunotherapy is quite different from other treatment options and it could change the global approach for recurrent ovarian cancer treatment. However, to date only fragmentary findings are available to define the real role of immunotherapy in this setting.

Analysis of germline gene copy number variants of patients with sporadic pancreatic adenocarcinoma reveals specific variations.

OBJECTIVES: The rapid fatality of pancreatic cancer is, in large part, the result of diagnosis at an advanced stage in the majority of patients. Identification of individuals at risk of developing pancreatic adenocarcinoma would be useful to improve the prognosis of this disease. There is presently no biological or genetic indicator allowing the detection of patients at risk. Our main goal was to identify copy number variants (CNVs) common to all patients with sporadic pancreatic cancer. METHODS: We analyzed gene CNVs in leukocyte DNA from 31 patients with sporadic pancreatic adenocarcinoma and from 93 matched controls. Genotyping was performed with the use of the GeneChip Human Mapping 500K Array Set (Affymetrix). RESULTS: We identified 431 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) probes with abnormal hybridization signal present in the DNA of all 31 patients. Of these SNP probes, 284 corresponded to 3 or more copies and 147 corresponded to 1 or 0 copies. Several cancer-associated genes were amplified in all patients. Conversely, several genes supposed to oppose cancer development were present as single copy. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that a set of 431 CNVs could be associated with the disease. This set could be useful for early diagnosis.