Curie Brief
Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
News
Uveal melanoma, long considered immune-resistant, may have met its match. A phase 2 trial found that tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy achieved a 37% response rate—but only when the T cells were tumor-reactive. A new biomarker called UMIS can predict that reactivity before surgery, opening the door to precision treatment for this notoriously hard-to-treat cancer.
Uveal melanoma—a rare eye cancer that spreads to other organs—has long been considered resistant to immunotherapy. But results from a phase 2 trial presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting suggest that tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy can produce deep, durable responses in select patients, and a new biomarker can identify who those patients are before treatment even begins.
The key insight: not all TIL products are created equal. Patients who received tumor-reactive TIL therapy had a confirmed objective response rate (ORR) of 37%, while those who received non-reactive TIL had a 0% response rate. In a pooled analysis with an independent NCI cohort, the reactive TIL ORR climbed to 43%. Responses were also durable, with a median duration of 17.3 months over a 5.7-year follow-up. The game-changer is the Uveal Melanoma Immunogenomic Score (UMIS)—a pre-surgery biopsy test that predicts TIL reactivity with an AUC of 0.85, far outperforming tumor mutational burden (AUC 0.51).
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: This research establishes that immune-cold cancers like uveal melanoma can respond to cell therapy—and that smarter patient selection is the key. The UMIS biomarker could spare patients from ineffective surgeries and guide them toward treatments most likely to work, a meaningful step forward in precision oncology.
