Genomic and Transcriptomic Features of Response to Anti-PD-1 Therapy in Metastatic Melanoma

Introduction with rationale and aims for study. Immune checkpoint blockade therapies have significantly altered the current landscape of cancer treatment. However, this immunotherapy still fails more often than it succeeds. There are now evidences that the lack of tumour infiltration by immune cells is the main mechanism of primary resistance to PD-1 blockade therapies for cancer. It has been postulated that cancer cell-intrinsic mechanisms may actively exclude T cells from tumours, suggesting that the finding of actionable molecules that could be inhibited to increase T cell infiltration may synergize with checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. With the idea of finding potential drivers of immune exclusion, we performed RNA sequencing analysis of biopsies from melanoma patients and compared the transcriptomic differences of samples that where infiltrated with those that did not have immune infiltration. Methods. RNAseq analysis of gene expressions on... (for more see dbGaP study page.)