Advancing the Understanding of Immune-Related Adverse Events to Improve Patient Care

As the field of immuno-oncology (IO) continues to expands to treat cancer patients, the laboratory team has an important role to play in managing patients undergoing immunotherapy. Patients sometimes experience immune-related adverse events (irAEs), and community pathologists and laboratory professionals must be able to recognize them and effectively communicate these findings with the cancer care team.

Immune-related adverse events are side effects that occur as a result of taking immunotherapy. They can be very mild, such as a skin rash, or more severe, such as GI issues. Some can even lead to death.

To educate the laboratory team on the management of these sometimes toxic side effects, ASCP has launched a new irAE Tumor Board Simulation, funded by a grant from Bristol Myers Squibb.  In this 90-minute, interactive online course, a pathologist, an oncologist and a radiologist discuss patient cases on pneumonitis, colitis, hepatitis, hypophysitis, thyroiditis, and irAEs in special populations. ASCP used a crowd-sourcing strategy to glean ideas from ASCP members for these cases and then used those ideas to shape the design of the tumor board. 

The multidisciplinary faculty includes Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, Assistant Professor of Oncology and Attending Physician at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD; Mizuki Nishino, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School and Staff Radiologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA; and Stuti G. Shroff, MBBS, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Assistant Pathologist of Anatomic Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

The multidisciplinary faculty team also addresses the importance of early detection and management of irAEs to assess response to IO treatment. Throughout the module, recommendations from the 2018 ASCO/NCCN guidelines on the management of irAEs in response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy are reinforced.

This module builds upon prior education developed by ASCP on irAEs, adding a rich set of patient cases as well as valuable insights from members of the multidisciplinary cancer care team. 

Since 2018, ASCP’s IO Work Group has overseen the design and production of IO education materials in a variety of ways, through online courses, webcasts, live meetings, quality improvement projects and more. The collective expertise of the work group members, combined with the education developed by ASCP as a part of its IO strategy, ensures that ASCP members stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving landscape. 

Stay up to date on IO through ASCP’s educational activities by clicking here.