FLOW CYTOMETRIC EVALUATION OF PERIPHERAL BLOOD BIOMARKERS FOR SOLID TUMOURS IMMUNOTHERAPY GUIDING: A REVIEW

• Autor(a) principal: Trigo, Ana Catrina
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Maia, Patrícia, Godinho, Inês, Rodrigues, Catarina A., Sousa, Maria Emília, Pires, Ana Marta, Azevedo, Carla, Santos, Lúcio Lara, Palmeira, Carlos, Martins, Gabriela
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34635/rpc.852

Cancer treatment is an area that is constantly being updated, namely with the discovery of immunotherapy as a clinically effective therapeutic modality for various types of cancer. Among these innovative therapies, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have proven to provide significant and long-lasting responses. However, this response does not occur for all patients, i.e., some patients do not benefit from this therapy. Due to this heterogeneity in immunotherapy response, there is an urgent need to identify and establish biomarkers that will allow the identification of patients who will respond to the therapy, while sparing the non-responders from adverse effects. In addition, the use these biomarkers in monitoring the response during treatment seems promising. Given the recognized role of the immune system in the anti-tumour response, these cells have been intensively studied as potential biomarkers. Their study in peripheral blood (PB) has been of great interest and importance, given its easy accessibility and less invasive nature. The detailed and integral evaluation of peripheral immunity requires a multiparametric methodology such as flow cytometry (FC), applying the simultaneous analysis of lineage markers together with maturation, activation and functional state markers. In this narrative literature review, we intend to describe the “state of the art” on the FC study of PB immune cell populations as potential biomarkers for ICI therapy in solid tumours. The results found are presented for each of the major populations and their subsets, namely T lymphocytes, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), neutrophils, eosinophils, dendritic cells (CD), natural killer cells (NK), monocyte subsets, and B cells.