Role of Immunotherapy for Patients With Microsatellite Instability
At Great Debates and Updates in Gastrointestinal Malignancies in New York, New York, Nataliya Uboha, MD, PhD, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, discusses the role immunotherapy can have in the treatment of patients with microsatellite instability.
Transcript:
I'm Nataliya Uboha, I'm a medical oncologist specializing in treating patients with GI cancers, and it's a great pleasure to be here at great debates with focus on GI malignancies. Today I talked about the use of immunotherapy in patients with tumors that have microsatellite instability and I argued the fact that immunotherapy should be offered to all patients regardless of the primary sites, as long as the tumor has microcellular instability.
We have a lot of accumulating data that immune checkpoint inhibitors work against these types of cancers and pembrolizumab has a disease agnostic approval for these tumors so I think it is first of all important to check all tumors for the presence of microcellular instability, and then utilize immunotherapy across disease types with the tumors that have this particular molecular signature. I do agree that we cannot expect the same type of activity with these agents against tumors of different primary sites however, we've seen great responses to immunotherapy in upper GI cancers, in colorectal cancers, less so in pancreatic cancers but still a signal is there so it's important to test and to incorporate the use of these these agents for patients with these diseases.
Source:
Uboha N. Debate: Debate: MSI Tumors: Does Anatomic Location Affect the Management? Yes vs No. Presented at Great Debates and Updates in Gastrointestinal Malignancies. May 17-18, 2024. New York, NY.
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