bims-myxlip 2021-04-11 papers

Issue of 2021–04–11
two papers selected by
Laura Mannarino, Humanitas Research

Front Oncol. 2021 ;11 662318

Assessment of Efficiency and Safety of Apatinib in Advanced Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcomas: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Zuoyao Long, Mengquan Huang, Kaituo Liu, Minghui Li, Jing Li, Hongmei Zhang, Zhen Wang, Yajie Lu.

Background: Previous studies, both in vitro and in vivo, have established that apatinib has anti-tumor properties. However, insufficient empirical evidence of the efficacy and safety of apatinib has been published for bone and soft tissue sarcoma, the reported results differing widely. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to assess the efficacy and toxicity of apatinib for the treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcoma.
Methods: Pubmed, Medline, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Ovid, Embase, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Vip (China), Cnki (China), Wanfang (China), and CBM (China) databases and literature from conferences were searched for studies of apatinib for the treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcomas, published from the inception of each database to Sep 1, 2020, without language restrictions. Primary outcomes were efficacy and toxicity of apatinib for the treatment of bone and soft tissue sarcoma, including treatment response, progression-free survival (PFS), and the incidence of adverse events. After extraction of data and methodological quality evaluation, random or fixed-effects models, as appropriate, were selected to calculate pooled effect estimates using R software (Version 3.4.1).
Results: A total of 21 studies with 827 participants were included in the present meta-analysis. The mean MINORS score was 10.48 ± 1.75 (range: 7-13), indicating evidence of moderate quality. Pooled outcomes indicated that overall response rate (ORR) and disease control rate (DCR) were 23.85% (95% CI: 18.47%-30.21%) and 79.16% (95% CI: 73.78%-83.68%), respectively. Median PFS ranged from 3.5 to 13.1 months, with a mean of 7.08 ± 2.98 months. Furthermore, the rates of PFS (PFR) after 1, 6, and 12 months were 99.31%, 44.90%, and 14.31%, respectively. Drug-related toxicity appears to be common in patients administered apatinib, for which hand-foot syndrome (41.13%), hypertension (36.15%), and fatigue (20.52%) ranked the top three most common adverse events. However, the incidence of grade 3-4 adverse events was relatively low and manageable.
Conclusions: Based on the best evidence currently available, apatinib demonstrates promising clinical efficacy and an acceptable safety profile for the treatment of advanced bone and soft tissue sarcoma, although additional high-quality clinical studies are required to further define its properties and toxicity.

Keywords: advanced; apatinib; meta-analysis; osteosarcoma; soft tissue sarcoma

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.662318

Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Apr 07. pii: clincanres.4459.2020. [Epub ahead of print]

Tumor Immune Microenvironment during Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition.

Mana Taki, Kaoru Abiko, Masayo Ukita, Ryusuke Murakami, Koji Yamanoi, Ken Yamaguchi, Junzo Hamanishi, Tsukasa Baba, Noriomi Matsumura, Masaki Mandai.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) has been shown to play a critical role in tumor development from initiation to metastasis. EMT could be regarded as a continuum, with intermediate hybrid epithelial and mesenchymal phenotypes having high plasticity. Classical EMT is characterized by the phenotype change of epithelial cells to cells with mesenchymal properties, but EMT is also associated with multiple other molecular processes, including tumor immune evasion. Some previous studies have shown that EMT is associated with the cell number of immunosuppressive cells, such as myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), and the expression of immune checkpoints, such as programmed cell death-ligand 1, in several cancer types. At the molecular level, EMT transcriptional factors, including Snail, Zeb1, and Twist1, produce or attract immunosuppressive cells or promote the expression of immunosuppressive checkpoint molecules via chemokine production, leading to a tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment. In turn, immunosuppressive factors induce EMT in tumor cells. This feedback loop between EMT and immunosuppression promotes tumor progression. For therapy directly targeting EMT has been challenging, the elucidation of the interactive regulation of EMT and immunosuppression is desirable for developing new therapeutic approaches in cancer. The combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and immunotherapy targeting immunosuppressive cells could be a promising therapy for EMT.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-20-4459