Seed Grant Recipient Identifies Potential New Targets for Treating Peritoneal Spread

Dr. Villani reports that with the one-year grant, her lab was able to generate crucial data and insights into malignant ascites that she’s hopeful will ultimately lead to new therapeutic targets.

The first goal of Dr. Villani’s project was to identify components of the peritoneal fluid in the abdomen that suppress the immune response to cancer. She co-led this study with Dr. Samuel Klempner and Dr. Steven Blum, using advanced single-cell analysis techniques to examine ascites and blood specimens taken from gastric cancer patients treated at MGH and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. They also optimized a cellular model of ascites derived from gastric cancer patients, which captures not only malignant cells, but also the entire microenvironment of ascites, including immune cells. Read the full article >>

Research Roundup

The FDA has approved the immunotherapy drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in combination with trastuzumab and chemotherapy as the first treatment for adults diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic HER2-positive gastric cancer who are not eligible for surgery.

A research team led by Wellcome Sanger Institute genetically sequenced samples of the stomach linings from people with and without gastric cancer, enhancing a map of mutations that could improve the understanding of how this cancer develops.

The role of the bacteria H. pylori in gastric cancer is well known, but researchers in England discovered that other bacteria leak through the stomach lining in the precancerous condition of gastric intestinal metaplasia, opening a potential new path to prevention, they said.