In recent years, cancer immunotherapy has been effective in treating patients with immunogenic, or so-called “hot” tumors with increased levels of inflammation and the presence of immune cells in and around the tumors. Prostate cancer, however, is considered a “cold” tumor, with few immune cells recognizing and infiltrating prostate malignancies. Accordingly, prostate cancer has been found to respond poorly to the class of immunotherapies known as immune checkpoint inhibitors.
In previous work, a team led by medical oncologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) identified a subset of prostate cancers that exhibited characteristics more typical of hot cancers. Now, in a paper appearing in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, researchers report that about a quarter of localized prostate cancers may demonstrate these immunologic traits, suggesting that a substantial number of patients with prostate cancer may, in fact, benefit from immunotherapies.
