Immunotherapy, cancer treatments that alter the immune system, making it better apt to fight tumor cells, have provided novel and efficacious therapeutic options for patients with advanced, difficult-to-treat malignancies. Many immune-based therapies work to boost immune mediators within the tumor microenvironment, and others can prime immune cells circulating through the body.
A groundbreaking study published in Cancer Cell brings us closer to achieving the best of both worlds. The novel data describing this comprehensive study suggests that we can achieve better efficacy with an immunotherapy that optimizes the immune response both inside the tumor (intratumoral immunity) and throughout the rest of the body (systemic immunity).
The researchers identified an enzyme (P4HA1) that is pivotal in directing immunotherapy effectiveness. P4HA1 regulates the differentiation of CD8+ T cells, a vital immune cell subset needed for finding and killing cancer. The study found that P4HA1 significantly upregulated the tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLN), the lymph nodes located directly downstream of a tumor where immune cells, and sometimes cancer cells, drain out of the tumor.
Leave a reply