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‹ Sat · 8 Aug 2026
Novel or significantly improved treatment

Circulating B cell and T cell activation states predict clinical outcomes in melanoma and reveal dynamic immune reinvigoration with checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy

Blood immune cell patterns before and during immunotherapy predict which melanoma patients will benefit most and which may experience side effects, enabling personalized treatment planning.

High-dimensional mass cytometry of peripheral B and T cells in treatment-naïve and longitudinally sampled CPI-treated melanoma patients identified a multi-dimensional immune signature that predicts irAEs, event-free survival, and overall survival before and during therapy. Pretreatment PD-1+ T cells predicted irAEs, while on-treatment emergence of class-switched memory B cells marked immune reinvigoration associated with better outcomes, positioning circulating immune profiling as a non-invasive predictor of CPI benefit in melanoma.

What the study was

Study design
prospective_cohort
Population
Melanoma patients receiving checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy (CPI-naive and longitudinally CPI-treated)
Category
Diagnostics
Maturity
Exploratory
Journal
Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

Why it surfaced

Multi-modal B+T cell CyTOF profiling from King's College London/Guy's Hospital with longitudinal samples and clinical outcome data; addresses major unmet need of predicting both CPI response and irAEs in melanoma; novel observation that B cells (not just T cells) are independent predictors of outcome; open access in JITC; direct applicability to patient stratification.

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