Selvarangan Ponnazhagan, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular and Cellular Pathology, recently published an article in the journal Cancer Research on the need for a of combination therapies when using immunotherapy to treat prostate cancer. The article, "Revisiting Immunotherapy: A Focus on Prostate Cancer," was featured in Renal & Urology News.

"Immunotherapy is reemerging as a powerful alternat therapy for many cancers," said Ponnazhagan in the Renal & Urology News interview. "However, the potential of immunotherapy as a standalone approach may not yield long-term benefits. Hence, based on patient-specific molecular signatures, immunotherapy needs to be combined with other therapies."

Dr. Ponnazhagan is a Senior Scientist of Experimental Therapeutics with the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, the Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering, the Comprehensive Diabetes Center, the Nephrology Research & Training Center, the Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal Bone and Autoimmunity Center, and the Global Center for Craniofacial, Oral and Dental Disorders.

From the Renal & Urology News article:

"He and his coauthors hypothesize that PCa outcomes may improve by combining patient-tailored immunotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors with conventional cytotoxic agents and androgen receptor (AR)-targeted therapies. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, which have demonstrated benefits in many solid tumors, may be part of combination therapies for PCa.

Inflammation plays a significant role during different stages of PCa growth and metastasis, and this is characterized by molecular heterogeneity of driver mutations. PCa is a “cold tumor,” meaning that it is characterized by low infiltration of T-cells at the tumor microenvironment. “Although the reasons vary for this phenomenon, an important reason is limited neoantigens,” Dr Ponnazhagan explained. “Some solid tumors, like a subset of colorectal cancers, are characterized by high mutation rates that make them immunologically reactive tumors, characterized by high T-cell infiltration. For successfully treating cold tumors by immunotherapy, approaches should take into effect strategies to overcome this limitation.”