Research directed by Johns Hopkins showed that for patients with operable pancreatic cancers, a three-pronged combination immunotherapy treatment—consisting of the pancreatic cancer vaccine GVAX, the immune checkpoint therapy nivolumab and urelemab, an anti-CD137 agonist antibody treatment—is safe, increases the amount of cancer-killing immune system T cells in the tumors, and appears effective when given two weeks prior to cancer-removal surgery. A description of the work was published in Nature Communications.
Cedars-Sinai investigators who previously developed an imaging tool that used artificial intelligence to predict pancreatic cancer are now working to adapt that tool specifically for Black patients, who have disproportionately high rates of the disease.
