Possible breakthrough in predicting immunotherapy response

PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors block proteins which disguise tumours from disease-fighting cells, allowing the body to fight cancer cells, but they do not work for all cancer patients. Now researchers at the University of Amsterdam have tested a diagnostic breath test device developed by Dutch company Breathomix, which has the potential to help cancer patients by predicting their response to immunotherapy before taking these expensive therapies.
The Breathomix device works by measuring chemicals in the breath, which can be altered by the presence of tumours, and an online tool then uses the data to determine if the patient would respond to certain immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitor drugs. During the testing patients, who were either on MSD’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) or BMS’ Opdivo (nivolumab), received a checkpoint inhibitor therapy, and breath profiles were collected from the metal oxide semiconductor electronic nose (eNose). The results found that the device was able to differentiate between patients’ response at three months of anti-PD-1 treatment, and that the eNose device was an effective predictive method of determining patients’ responses to immunotherapy with 85% accuracy.