The Clinical Utility of Immunoscore in Stage III CRC

Jerome Galon, PhD, research director, French Institute of Health and Medical Research, discusses the clinical utility of Immunoscore in stage III colorectal cancer (CRC).

The current management of patients with stage III CRC is chemotherapy, but the duration of therapy remains under scrutiny, Galon says. The IDEA study evaluated the benefit of 3 months of adjuvant chemotherapy versus 6 months. In the study presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, researchers demonstrated that patients with an intermediate or high Immunoscore seemed to respond better to 6 months of chemotherapy. In contrast, patients with a low Immunoscore did not derive any additional benefit from 6 months of treatment versus 3 months of treatment.

Therefore, Galon recommends that patients with a low Immunoscore not be exposed to 6 months of a toxic regimen. For the time being, these patients should be referred to clinical trials since they will not benefit from the 6-month regimen.