Kim TH, et al. J Gastric Cancer. 2023 Jan;23:e11. https://doi.org/10.5230/jgc.2023.23.e11

Kim IH, et al. J Gastric Cancer. 2025 Jan;25:e11. https://doi.org/10.5230/jgc.2025.25.e11

Peritoneal metastasis, also known as peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC), is a refractory cancer that is typically resistant to conventional therapies. The typical treatment for PC is a combination of cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). Recently, research in this area has seen significant advances, particularly in immunotherapy as an alternative therapy for PC, which is very encouraging. Catumaxomab is a trifunctional antibody intraperitoneal (IP) immunotherapy authorized in Europe that can be used to diminish malignant ascites by targeting EpCAM. Intraperitoneal (IP) immunotherapy breaks immunological tolerance to treat peritoneal illness. Increasing T-cell responses and vaccination against tumor-associated antigens are two methods of treatment. CAR-T cells, vaccine-based therapeutics, dendritic cells (DCs) in combination with pro-inflammatory cytokines and NKs, adoptive cell transfer, and immune checkpoint inhibitors are promising treatments for PC. Carcinoembryonic antigen-expressing tumors are suppressed by IP administration of CAR-T cells. This reaction was strengthened by anti-PD-L1 or anti-Gr1. When paired with CD137 co-stimulatory signaling, CAR-T cells for folate receptor cancers made it easier for T-cell tumors to find their way to and stay alive in the body.

Purpose Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype that has poor prognosis and exhibits a unique tumor microenvironment. Analysis of the tumor microbiome has indicated a relationship between the tumor microenvironment and treatment response. Therefore, we attempted to reveal the role of the tumor microbiome in patients with TNBC receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy.Materials and Methods We collected TNBC patient RNA-sequencing samples from the Gene Expression Omnibus and extracted microbiome count data. Differential and relative abundance were estimated with linear discriminant analysis effect size. We calculated the immune cell fraction with CIBERSORTx and conducted survival analysis using the Cancer Genome Atlas patient data. Correlations between the microbiome and immune cell compositions were analyzed and a prediction model was constructed to estimate drug response.Results Among the pathological complete response group (pCR), the beta diversity varied considerably; consequently, 20 genera and 24 species were observed to express a significant differential and relative abundance. Pandoraea pulmonicola and Brucella melitensis were found to be important features in determining drug response. In correlation analysis, Geosporobacter ferrireducens, Streptococcus sanguinis, and resting natural killer cells were the most correlated factors in the pCR, whereas Nitrosospira briensis, Plantactinospora sp. BC1, and regulatory T cells were key features in the residual disease group.Conclusion Our study demonstrated that the microbiome analysis of tumor tissue can predict chemotherapy response of patients with TNBC. Further, the immunological tumor microenvironment may be impacted by the tumor microbiome, thereby affecting the corresponding survival and treatment response.

Over the past decade, oncolytic viruses (OVs) have been developed as a promising treatment alone or in combination in immuno-oncology but have faced challenges in late-stage clinical trials. Our retrospective reanalysis of vaccinia oncolytic virus (VOV) clinical trials indicates that lower doses—rather than the maximum tolerated dose (MTD)—are associated with better tumor response rates. Patients who responded well to lower doses generally had prolonged survival rates in the early phase clinical trial. The association between poor outcomes and an increase in OV-induced neutrophils (OV-N) but not baseline neutrophil counts suggests the need for a comprehensive characterization of OV-N. Although this reanalysis is limited by patient heterogeneity—including differences in cancer type and stage, treatment schedules, and administration routes—it remains informative given the complexities of translational studies in the tumor-bearing mouse models of vaccinia oncolytic viruses. Notably, while OV-N increases with higher viral doses, the immune state shaped by tumor progression likely amplifies this tendency. These findings highlight the importance of OV-N immune modulation as well as dose optimization for the successful clinical development of VOV.

Kim TH, et al. J Gastric Cancer. 2023 Apr;23:e20. https://doi.org/10.5230/jgc.2023.23.e20