Expanding the Use of Immunoscore in Early-Stage CRC

Jerome Galon, PhD, research director, French Institute of Health and Medical Research, discusses ways to expand the use of Immunoscore in early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC).

At the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, the IDEA study evaluated the benefit of 3 months of adjuvant chemotherapy versus 6 months in patients with stage III CRC. Researchers demonstrated that patients with an intermediate or high Immunoscore seemed to respond better to 6 months of FOLFOX. In contrast, patients with a low Immunoscore did not derive any additional benefit from 6 months of treatment versus 3 months of treatment.

Galon says the clinical utility of Immunoscore should be validated for other chemotherapy regimens like CAPOX, which is also used in the stage III setting. A similar study to IDEA should be conducted. Furthermore, in the stage II space, Immunoscore has been shown to effectively distinguish between high- and low-risk patients. As such, Immunoscore could have a role in determining which patients need chemotherapy or not in that setting as well.