Proteomic signatures of immunotherapy response!

 

...sometimes it's all about getting access so super cool and important samples and just not cutting corners! That appears to be the case in this great paper in press at MCP!  

They had access to patients undergoing PD-1/PDL1 immunotherapy and tracked their plasma. The cohort isn't the biggest one on the planet, but it sure does seems well controlled for variables. 

The authors depleted, facilitated digestion by doing a very quick one-lane SDS-PAGE cut and digest - and then SWATH'ed everything. Large spectral libraries derived from cancer studies were used in addition to more common human ones. 

Where this really shines is that they tracked this and found out how the individual patients responded to the therapies and backtracked to interesting patterns when people respond well - or don't. As the patients weren't on the exact same regimens, the statistics do seem to get really complicated - and beyond my ability to really evaluate for a short blog post, but the downstream validation on a second cohort upholds the strength of their initial findings!