NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[flipper44]

From a skeptical perspective, one might read the latest UCLA article (767: TCR sequencing can identify and track tumor-specific T cell populations and is a predictive biomarker of response to DC vaccination in glioblastoma patients) and say, "hey, UCLA only used 6 patients from standard of care to determine if TIL made a difference for survival in GBM."

The answer in the UCLA paper is that TIL count in SOC patients' tumors did not make a difference in survival.

I found UCLA to be confirmed in a 2013 paper in Clinical Cancer Research.

TILs are not associated with prolonged with survival (171 patient cases reviewed)

TILs were not associated with prolonged survival in univariate analyses. We compared the survival of cases with absent (0) lymphocytes, present (1+) and abundant (2+) lymphocytes using a log-rank test (p>0.05) (Figure 3). We found patient age was a highly significant predictor of survival (p<0.001); however, lymphocytes did not vary according to age. The mean age of patients with absent (0), present (1+) and abundant (2+) lymphocytes was 56.9 (SD ± 14.6), 57.3 (SD ± 12.1) and 54.8 years (SD ± 13.1), respectively (p>0.05). TILs were not a significant predictor of survival in an age-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model (data not shown) (p>0.05). If tumors belonging to the classical transcriptional class were excluded, there were no survival differences according to TILs among proneural, neural and mesenchymal tumors (p>0.05). Similarly, if mesenchymal tumors were excluded, there were no survival differences according to TILs among proneural, neural and classical tumors (p>0.05). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865611/

In other words, I think the UCLA paper and this paper together demonstrate TIL count does not make a difference in GBM when treated with SOC.

I don't know if many people know this, because SOC can make a difference in other types of cancers to one degree or another that have high TIL counts.

While this does not remove all questions, I think it helps confirm.