ORLANDO April 16, 2023, American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023 - While Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs) and Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are the mainstay first line treatment options in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), identifying with precision the patients who will benefit from these treatments remains a challenge.

Farcast's TruTumor technology has the unique capability to capture the heterogeneity and complexity of human tumors. This is achieved by retaining tumor and stroma along with the intra-tumoral immune cells that provide response signals from living human tumor fragments. For the study presented in this poster, the TruTumor technology in the Farcast platform was used to treat surgical excess specimens with sunitinib and nivolumab.

Sunitinib treatment significantly increased apoptotic signal as measured by caspase-3 expression (8/10 samples, p value<0.01), along with decrease in tumor content in 4/10 samples (average drop 23%). The two samples that did not respond to sunitinib treatment showed an increase in Interferon gamma (IFNg) (Log2FC ± SD, 2.7± 0.7) and Granzyme B (Log2FC ± SD, 1.05± 0.85) secretion, in response to nivolumab treatment.

One sample showed an increase in CD8+ Granzyme B, CD8+ Ki67 and decrease in CD4+ FoxP3 population, with concomitant decrease in Pan CK+ population. This patient tumor also showed regression in tumor content indicating anti-tumor response to nivolumab treatment.

In summary, the Farcast platform was able to identify potential responder to ICI therapy, where TKI had failed and this platform offers hope for personalization of treatment choices for patients by improving the predictability of response. TruTumor has helped biopharmaceutical companies gain powerful insights into the mechanisms of a wide range of therapies in early development stages and predict their efficacy better than other simplistic and non-human testing models.

https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/83/7_Supplement/4568/724506/Abstract-4568-Evaluating-response-of-renal-cell?searchresult=1