Gianmaria Frigè

Supplementary Tables S1-S6_S17-S18

In tumor-bearing mice, cyclic fasting or fasting-mimicking diets (FMD) enhance the activity of antineoplastic treatments by modulating systemic metabolism and boosting antitumor immunity. Here we conducted a clinical trial to investigate the safety and biological effects of cyclic, five-day FMD in combination with standard antitumor therapies. In 101 patients, the FMD was safe, feasible, and resulted in a consistent decrease of blood glucose and growth factor concentration, thus recapitulating metabolic changes that mediate fasting/FMD anticancer effects in preclinical experiments. Integrated transcriptomic and deep-phenotyping analyses revealed that FMD profoundly reshapes anticancer immunity by inducing the contraction of peripheral blood immunosuppressive myeloid and regulatory T-cell compartments, paralleled by enhanced intratumor Th1/cytotoxic responses and an enrichment of IFNγ and other immune signatures associated with better clinical outcomes in patients with cancer. Our findings lay the foundations for phase II/III clinical trials aimed at investigating FMD antitumor efficacy in combination with standard antineoplastic treatments.Significance:Cyclic FMD is well tolerated and causes remarkable systemic metabolic changes in patients with different tumor types and treated with concomitant antitumor therapies. In addition, the FMD reshapes systemic and intratumor immunity, finally activating several antitumor immune programs. Phase II/III clinical trials are needed to investigate FMD antitumor activity/efficacy.This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 1

Immune checkpoint inhibitors improve the treatment of many solid tumors and have shown encouraging results in advanced squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), yet only a minority of patients respond to immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. We conducted the PEVOsq trial, an open-label, nonrandomized, multicenter, basket phase 2 trial to evaluate the combination of pembrolizumab and vorinostat in recurrent/metastatic SCC of various origins. The primary endpoint was the objective response rate (ORR) in each tumor cohort during treatment as per the investigators’ assessment. Secondary endpoints included safety and antitumor activity evaluation in terms of centrally confirmed ORR, progression-free survival, overall survival and duration of response. In the efficacy population (n = 107), the ORR was met in cervical (39%), anal (31%) and vulvar/vaginal (19%) cancer cohorts, but not in head and neck SCC (19%) or penile (18%) cancer cohorts (overall ORR = 26%). Median progression-free survival was 4.0 months (95% confidence interval: 2.6–4.3), and median overall survival was 11.1 months (95% confidence interval: 9.2–17.4). In the safety population, 101 (91%) of 111 patients developed at least one treatment-related adverse event, with 39% and 5.4% of patients experiencing at least one grade 3 and grade 4 treatment-related adverse event, respectively. Vorinostat-related toxicity prompted a dose reduction/interruption in 66% of patients. Whole-exome sequencing analyses revealed several potential predictive biomarkers of response to treatment. Further studies in a larger number of patients are required to validate these findings. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04357873.

Neuroendocrine neoplasms incidence has been increasing, arising the need for precise and early diagnostic tools. Liquid biopsy (LB) offers a less invasive alternative to tissue biopsy, providing real-time molecular information from circulating tumour components in body fluids. The aim of this review is to analyse the current evidence concerning LB in NENs and its role in clinical practice. We conducted a systematic review in July 2024 focusing on LB applications in NENs, including circulating tumour cells (CTCs), circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), micro RNA (miRNA), messenger RNA (mRNA) and extracellular vesicles. Sixty-five relevant articles were analysed. The LB showed potential in diagnosing and monitoring NENs. While CTCs face limitations due to low shedding, ctDNA provides valuable information on high-grade neoplasms. MiRNA and mRNA (e.g., the NETest) offer high sensitivity and specificity for diagnosis and prognosis, outperforming traditional markers like chromogranin A. The LB has significant potential for NEN diagnosis and monitoring but lacks widespread clinical integration due to limited prospective studies and guidelines, requiring further validation. Advances in sequencing technologies may enhance the clinical utility of LB in NENs. Future research should focus on refining LB methods, standardising protocols and exploring applications in high-grade NENs.

Motivation: The steady increment of Whole Genome/Exome sequencing and the development of novel Next Generation Sequencing-based gene panels requires continuous testing and validation of variant calling (VC) pipelines and the detection of sequencing-related issues to be maintained up-to-date and feasible for the clinical settings. State of the art tools are reliable when used to compute standard performance metrics. However, the need for an automated software to discriminate between bioinformatic and sequencing issues and to optimize VC parameters remains unmet. Results: The aim of the current work is to present RecallME, a bioinformatic suite that tracks down difficult-to-detect variants as insertions and deletions in highly repetitive regions, thus providing the maximum reachable recall for both single nucleotide variants and small insertion and deletions and to precisely guide the user in the pipeline optimization process. Availability and implementation: Source code is freely available under MIT license at https://github.com/mazzalab-ieo/recallme. RecallME web application is available at https://translational-oncology-lab.shinyapps.io/recallme/. To use RecallME, users must obtain a license for ANNOVAR by themselves.