Tumor immune microenvironment remodeling predicts response to checkpoint inhibitor therapy

A longitudinal pan-cancer single-cell atlas reveals that the trajectory of tumor immune microenvironment remodeling during checkpoint inhibitor therapy, rather than the pre-treatment immune state, is the dominant predictor of clinical response. Lin et al. tracked dynamic changes across multiple cancer types and distilled the remodeling patterns into a baseline gene signature capable of forecasting treatment outcome before therapy begins. The finding reframes biomarker development away from static snapshots toward directional immune dynamics, with potential to improve patient selection for immunotherapy across tumor types.