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Recent advances in immunotherapy have yielded extremely durable responses in several cancers, including melanoma. However, little is known about how to predict which patients are likely to respond. Not surprisingly, there appears to be a correlation between likelihood of response and the presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs).
To tackle this issue, investigators profiled 296 human melanomas, subdividing them as T-cell inflamed or noninflamed. By examining gene expression differences between the two types, they homed in on β-catenin signaling in noninflamed tumors. A minority of these tumors showed activating mutations in β-catenin and inactivating mutations of negative regulators of β-catenin.
The researchers then tested whether en…