Teruki Kobayashi, Kazuhiro Noma, Seitaro Nishimura, Takuya Kato, Noriyuki Nishiwaki, Toshiaki Ohara, Tomoyoshi Kunitomo, Kento Kawasaki, Masaaki Akai, Satoshi Komoto, Hajime Kashima, Satoru Kikuchi, Hiroshi Tazawa, Yasuhiro Shirakawa, Peter L Choyke, Hisataka Kobayashi, Toshiyoshi Fujiwara
Esophageal cancer remains a highly aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis, despite ongoing advancements in treatments such as immunotherapy. The tumor microenvironment, particularly cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), plays a crucial role in driving the aggressiveness of esophageal cancer. In a previous study utilizing human-derived xenograft models, we successfully developed a novel cancer treatment that targeted CAFs with near-infrared photoimmunotherapy (NIR-PIT), as an adjuvant therapy. In this study, we sought to translate our findings toward clinical practice by employing patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models and utilizing humanized monoclonal antibodies, specifically Sibrotuzumab, which is anti-human fibroblast activation protein (FAP) antibody and already being investigated in clinical trials as monotherapy...
April 18, 2024: Molecular Cancer Therapeutics