Immunotherapy has welcomed a new era of cancer treatment. By utilizing the patient’s own body’s natural defenses to fight cancer, the patients that respond to immunotherapy have great prognoses. However, not every cancer patient responds well to immunotherapy.
There are three indications that are currently believed to indicate immunotherapy response:
- Tumor mutational burden (TMB), the total number of mutations per coding area of a tumor genome.
- Microsatellite instability (MSI), the predisposition to mutation resulting from impaired DNA mismatch repair.
- Tumor microenvironment (TME), the cellular environment in which the tumor exists.
ACT Genomics and Quark Biosciences have established a cooperation to develop a tumor microenvironment chip, placing a select group of biomarkers onto Quark Biosciences’ PanelChip platform, resulting in a test that can help predict immunotherapy response in cancer patients.
