Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a new role that a specific protein plays in regulating cell resistance and fighting tumors in certain types of cancer, offering hope for improved cancer therapies and patient outcomes.

The protein, known as NKG7, is found in CD8+ T cells, a type of immune cell that can recognize and kill cancer cells. CD8+ T cell resilience is essential for anti-tumor activity. The protein allows CD8+ T cells to continue killing cancer cells even under stress and can help prevent cancer from growing and spreading.

“We found that patients with invasive bladder cancer who had NKG7-expressing CD8+ T cells within their tumor had superior survival compared to patients without,” says Dan Billadeau, Ph.D., senior author of the study, detailed in Nature Communications. “This discovery holds promise for manipulating CD8+ T cells — for example, CAR-T and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) — to combat cancer.”