PROF ANNETTE BYRNE WINS THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE IN IRELAND MEDAL FOR BEST ONCOLOGY PAPER

On 25 September 2023, GLIORESOLVE Coordinator Prof Annette Byrne was awarded the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland medal for best Oncology paper 2023.

Prof.  James Jones (Professor of Anatomy, School of Medicine, University College Dublin) presented the RAMI medal to Dr Kieron White, who accepted on behalf of Prof Annette Byrne, for the winning paper in the Oncology category, “Identification, validation and biological characterisation of novel glioblastoma tumour microenvironment subtypes: implications for precision immunotherapy”. Dr White, along with Dr Kate Connor are joint first authors on the publication.

The winning paper detailed the research that was undertaken by Prof Byrne, Drs White and Connor, and the wider team as part of the GLIOTRAIN project (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN initiative, Grant Agreement 766069). Briefly, the team identified that glioblastoma tumours can be categorised into three subtypes based on the different kinds of non-cancer cells that can be found within the brain tumour. These so-called ‘tumour microenvironment’ cells can include immune cells and blood vessel cells. Currently, the majority of patients with glioblastoma are treated in the same way. Further investigation of these newly identified subtypes will mean that different patients could receive treatment specific to the cells in their own tumour. This type of targeted treatment is known as 'precision medicine'.

Precision medicine approaches could include the use of immune-targeting therapies (immunotherapies) in patients that have the tumour subtype defined by high levels of immune cells within their tumour microenvironment. An assessment of glioblastoma clinical trial datasets, detailed in this publication, provides support for this idea. The analysis showed that patients with this subtype of tumour may have an improved outcome when treated with immunotherapies compared to other subtypes.

Overall, this publication is of particular interest to the GLIORESOLVE consortium, as it was this work that underpins the GLIORESOLVE research proposal. Indeed, all of the projects within the current project are focussed on exploring the new tumour microenvironment subtypes at a deeper level, with the overall aim of generating enough data to underpin a post-project Phase 2 clinical trial.