The American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting was held April 5-10, 2024 in San Diego, California. More than 23,200 registrants from 78 countries and territories participated in the meeting. More than 240 clinical trials were presented. A diverse program featured nearly 730 invited speakers from 20 countries.
Paradigm-shifting plenary sessions topics included early cancer biology and interception, profiling tumor microenvironments, the underpinnings of metastasis, potential of novel immunotherapy strategies and artificial intellegence in oncology. 58 major symposia highlighted amongst other topics of genomic instability and metastasis, DNA repair and host immune response, cellular competition in premalignancy and cancer, cancer vaccines, engineered cells, cancer epigenetics, genomics-based predictive biomarkers, surgical Innovations in Cancer.
Dr. Andriy Trailin presented a poster by Chaperon team „Adaptive immune cells in colorectal cancer between normal mucosa, primary tumor and liver metastasis”. The study highlighted that development of primary colorectal cancer is accompanied by decreased densities of T and B cells in tumor center compared to normal mucosa. Patients with metachronous liver metastases displayed greater densities of CD3+ and CD8+ T cells in the tumor center of primary colorectal cancer compared to patients with synchronous metastases, which can contribute to delayed metastatic process. CD8+ T cells in liver metastases, but not in primary tumor, and in patients with synchronous but not metachronous disease conferred survival benefit (Fig 1). CD20+ B cells both in primary tumor and in patients with synchronous group and ametachronous disease were are associated with longer survival.
Figure 1. Kaplan–Meier analysis showing survival in patients with high vs low densities of CD8+ and CD20+ immune cells in different regions of pCRC (primary colorectal cancer) and mCRC (liver metastases of colorectal cancer). PT: perirumor, IM: inner invasive margin.
