Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, have developed a complex model system that mimics the most common form of bowel cancer and is showing how it ‘hides’ from immunotherapy.

A personalised cancer vaccine, used in combination with an immunotherapy drug, triggers a response from the immune system that is specific to the cancer and shows some clinical benefit, according to the results of an early clinical trial presented at the virtual AACR conference.

Advanced bowel cancer cells have very few ‘molecular flags’ on their surface, helping to explain why they may be hard for the immune system to detect, a new study has shown.