TY - JOUR N1 - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ VL - 12 KW - Cancer KW - chronobiology KW - circadian KW - immunotherapy KW - melanoma A1 - Gonçalves, Lisa A1 - Gonçalves, Duarte A1 - Esteban-Casanelles, Teresa A1 - Barroso, Tiago A1 - Soares de Pinho, Inês A1 - Lopes-Brás, Raquel A1 - Esperança-Martins, Miguel A1 - Patel, Vanessa A1 - Torres, Sofia A1 - Teixeira de Sousa, Rita A1 - Mansinho, André A1 - Costa, Luís PB - MDPI AG JF - Cells AV - public TI - Immunotherapy around the Clock: Impact of Infusion Timing on Stage IV Melanoma Outcomes Y1 - 2023/08/15/ ID - discovery10175867 UR - https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12162068 IS - 16 N2 - Although the impact of circadian timing on immunotherapy has yet to be integrated into clinical practice, chronoimmunotherapy is an emerging and promising field as circadian oscillations are observed in immune cell numbers as well as the expression of immunotherapy targets, e.g., programmed cell death protein-1 and its ligand programmed death ligand 1. Concurrent retrospective studies suggest that morning infusions may lead to higher effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors in melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and kidney cancer. This paper discusses the results of a retrospective study (2016-2022) exploring the impact of infusion timing on the outcomes of all 73 patients with stage IV melanoma receiving immunotherapy at a particular medical center. While the median overall survival (OS) was 24.2 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 9.04-39.8), for a median follow-up of 15.3 months, our results show that having more than 75% of infusions in the afternoon results in shorter median OS (14.9 vs. 38.1 months; hazard ratio 0.45 [CI 0.23-0.86]; p < 0.01) with more expressive impacts on particular subgroups: women, older patients, and patients with a lower tumor burden at the outset of immunotherapy. Our findings highlight the potential benefits of follow-up validation in prospective and translational randomized studies. ER -