Update Session: Society Initiatives

Immune Biomarker Task Force Update

In a session focused on SITC-driven initiatives, SITC President and Immune Biomarkers Task Force Chair Lisa Butterfield, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, presented recent progress on the SITC Immune Biomarkers Task Force. Based on the success of previous workshops and publications, the SITC Immune Biomarkers Task Force reconvened to address novel topics in the field, including areas of biology that are only recently understood to impact the immune response (metabolism, microbiome, and pathway signaling), new technologies and high-throughput approaches, novel and conventional agents affecting immunity, and bioinformatics, complex data analysis, and advances in biological sampling. From 2015 to 2016, four working groups (WG) collaborated to address the progress and challenges preventing the field from moving forward in each of these key areas. In this ongoing effort, these WGs have generated five separate white papers and led a dedicated workshop, Immunotherapy Biomarkers 2016: Overcoming the Barriers, held in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. In addition to these white papers, the WGs also authored short reports highlighting novel technologies used for biomarker development in a series published in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer (JITC0). Following completion of one year’s worth of these monthly reports, submission has been opened to authors outside of the SITC Task Force in order to allow contributions from others with relevant expertise in the field.

Immunoscore as a Prognostic Marker in Stage I-III Colon Cancer: Results of a SITC-led Global Validation Study

As an update to the results presented at ASCO 2016, Jérôme Galon, PhD (INSERM) presented the latest results of the SITC Immunoscore Validation Project. In an effort to validate the Immunoscore, a standardized immunohistochemistry-based assay to measure the immune contexture in and around tumors, SITC led an international collaborative effort of centers worldwide. In this study, 3855 patients with stage I-III colon cancer were quantified using the Immunoscore assay. After exclusion criteria, 2667 patients were evaluable and divided into three separate groups, consisting of a training set (TS), internal validation set (IVS), and external validation set (EVS). As presented previously, Dr. Galon presented the final results of the study illustrating that the primary objective of the study was reached; Immunoscore high vs. low predicted time-to-recurrence in the TS, IVS, and EVS. In secondary analyses, a subgroup of high-risk, Immunoscore-low patients was identified in the stage II cohort. New data concerning microsatellite instability (MSI) status were also presented. In 1326 patients with reported MSI status (high vs. low), Immunoscore was predictive of overall and disease-free survival independent of MSI status. These findings illustrate the prognostic value of the Immunoscore assay in colon cancer patients and justify the use of immune parameters as a new component of cancer classification.