Nature Communications (Aug 2020)

Strength of immune selection in tumors varies with sex and age

  • Andrea Castro,
  • Rachel Marty Pyke,
  • Xinlian Zhang,
  • Wesley Kurt Thompson,
  • Chi-Ping Day,
  • Ludmil B. Alexandrov,
  • Maurizio Zanetti,
  • Hannah Carter

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17981-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

Read online

Here the authors show that stronger immune selection and immune editing in females and younger patients lead to the accumulation of poorly presented driver mutations in tumors. These results may explain why young and female patients are characterized by lower response rates to immune checkpoint blockade therapies.