Checkpoint blockade immunotherapy has emerged as excellent strategies to treat patients with various cancers, as demonstrated by Novel prose to Drs. James Allison and Tasuku Honjo. Although anti-CTLA-r, PD-1 or PD-L1/2 antibodies have been documented in a variety of cancers, responses are usually observed in a minority of patients. Considering the substantial risk of autoimmune side effects and the high cost of the treatment, it is critical to develop methods to identify the patients who can benefit from checkpoint blockade therapies. While various technologies have been assessed for predicting responses to checkpoint blockade therapies, their predictive power and usefulness as potential biomarkers were limited. 

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​NLRC5 is a critical transactivator for the expression of MHC class I, which is required for activation of cytotoxic T cells and elimination of cancer cells. By analyzing gene expression in skin cancer (melanoma) patients, we identified that the patients group with high expression of NLRC5 is likely to respond to immunnocheckpoint blockade therapies. By combing NLRC5 expression with other biomarkers, we could increase the prediction power. We also found that similar method is useful to predict patients' 5-year survival. These results suggest that NLRC5 tumor expression, alone or together with other biomarkers constitutes a valuable predictive biomarker for both prognosis and response to anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 blockade immunotherapy in cancer patients.

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​Press release: https://www.hokudai.ac.jp/news/2021/02/post-789.html (JPN)

​The paper was published in Scientific Reports.