Cancer experts have tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to use the total number of mutations in a tumor, called the tumor mutation burden (TMB), to predict a patient’s response to immunotherapy. Now, investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy have found that a subset of mutations within the overall TMB, termed “persistent mutations,” are less likely to be edited out as cancer evolves, rendering tumors continuously visible to the immune system and predisposing them to respond to immunotherapy.
This article was originally published on MedicalXpress.com
