Pierobon Studying Sampling Method For Capturing Immune Activation & Inflammatory Responses

Mariaelena Pierobon, Associate Professor, Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), received funding for the study: "A Systems Approach to Immunotherapy Biomarker Identification Within the Postoperative Wound-Healing Microenvironment in Patients with Gastroesophageal Cancer."

For this study, Pierobon and Raymond Wadlow, an oncologist at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, seek to test a novel sampling method for capturing immune activation and inflammatory responses within the tumor microenvironment of patients affected by gastroesophageal cancers.

The researchers will use surgical exudates (SEs), a biological fluid that is so far only partially explored, as a dynamic window into the tumor microenvironment to capture biomarkers associated with response to standard of care in combination with antibody-based immunotherapy.

"Therapeutic strategies targeting the interaction between tumor cells and surrounding immune cells have shown promising results in oncology and have become the new frontier in cancer treatment, " said Pierobon.

However, the quest for biomarkers able to predict disease progression and response to antibody-based immunotherapy still remains a central issue for advancing precision medicine.

"We seek to test a novel sampling method for capturing immune activation and inflammatory responses within the tumor microenvironment of patients affected by gastroesophageal cancers. We envision using this sampling method to identify predictive markers of response to treatment with standard of care in combination with immunotherapy in cancer," Pierobon explained.

Pierobon received $14,460 from Inova Healthcare for this research. Funding began in November 2021 and will end in late October 2022.