Highlights of This Issue

Resistance to antiangiogenic therapy has been shown to be partly mediated by MET. In a phase 1b/II clinical trial, Harding and colleagues examined the combination of antibodies against VEGFR-2 (ramucirumab) and MET (emibetuzumab) in advanced solid tumors. No dose-limiting toxicities were observed with this combination. This treatment regimen was particularly effective in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with high MET expression, with a three-fold increase in progression-free survival observed in this population. These data suggest that combined inhibition of MET and VEGFR-2 is a promising treatment strategy for MET-positive HCC.

Breast cancers with HER2 overexpression are highly aggressive, and patients often develop resistance to anti-HER2 therapy. In this phase I study for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancers (MBC), Li and colleagues assessed the combination of pyrotinib, a pan-ErbB inhibitor, with capecitabine. The combination of oral pyrotinib and capecitabine was well-tolerated and led to an overall response rate of 78.6% and a median progression-free survival of 22.1 months. Further clinical study of this combination is warranted in HER2-positive MBC.

Follicular lymphoma is the most frequent indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Although current treatments are effective for follicular lymphoma in the short term, most patients eventually relapse. Cox and colleagues report the results of a phase I clinical trial testing the intranodal administration of monocyte-derived IFNα-conditioned dendritic cells (IFN-DC) in refractory and relapsed patients. Combined with intranodal injections of rituximab, IFN-DC were well-tolerated and had an overall response rate of 50%. Furthermore, treatment with IFN-DC led to the infiltration of tumor-specific T cells. These results support the further use of IFN-DC.

Biopsy samples must have sufficient tumor cellularity for all necessary diagnostic testing. Inadvertent sampling of fibrosis in lung cancer patients can yield inadequate biopsies, necessitating repeat procedures. Hariri and colleagues demonstrate the use of polarization sensitive OCT (PS-OCT) to accurately identify and distinguish fibrosis from tumor using birefringence detection, establishing a strong correlation between PS-OCT and histology for fibrosis quantification. PS-OCT reliably distinguished tumor regions with low fibrosis (≤20%) from those with >20% fibrosis. The use of PS-OCT for this purpose will allow more accurate biopsy sampling to ultimately improve biopsy-mediated diagnostics.