Maria Giuseppa Vitale

TL;DR: Overweight could be considered a tumorigenic immune-dysfunction that could be effectively reversed by ICIs and BMI could be a useful predictive tool in clinical practice and a stratification factor in prospective clinical trials with ICIs.

TL;DR: The finding of a greater incidence of irAEs among female patients ranks among the "hot topics" in gender-related differences in immuno-oncology.

TL;DR: The association between baseline steroids administered for cancer-related indication, systemic antibiotics, PPIs and worse clinical outcomes with PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors is confirmed, which can be assumed to have immune-modulating detrimental effects.

TL;DR: Cumulative exposure to corticosteroids, antibiotics and PPIs (three likely microbiota-modulating drugs) leads to progressively worse outcomes after ICI therapy, and a simple prognostic score is proposed that can help stratifying patients in routine practice and clinical trials of ICIs.

TL;DR: Considering the previously evidenced association between higher BMI and better outcome, the current finding about the relationship between BMI and irAEs occurrence can contribute to consideration of these findings as the upside of the downside, which underlies an 'immunogenic phenotype'.