research finding opens the door to potential clinical approaches that can stimulate the body's ability to fight against cancer -
The microenvironment that supports a cancerous tumor starves also immune cells that the body sends to destroy cancer, University of Pittsburgh cancer Institute (UPCI) scientists has revealed in a discovery that has the potential to significantly increase the performance of the revolutionary immunotherapy drugs.
UPCI team has shown that when the immune T cells enter the microenvironment of the tumor, their mitochondria - which act as mini-mills inside the cells, which makes the energy and critical reagents a cell needs to survive - begin to shrink and disappear, which indicates that the T cell is fuel and can not do its job destroying tumor. The finding, reported online today and planned for the next week's issue of Immunity , opens the door to several clinical approaches that could help maintain the functioning T cells and enhance the capacity of the body fight against cancer.
"Immunotherapy to stimulate the body's immune system is increasingly the way we treat people with aggressive cancers. It is effective in a subset of patients, but the truth is that only about 20 to 40 percent of patients respond to treatment, and it still does not know why, "said lead author Greg M. Delgoffe, Ph.D., assistant professor of immunology and a member of the tumor microenvironment in Centre PUIC in partnership with UPMC CancerCenter. "It is a huge issue in the field of cancer immunotherapy, and we think we have found a large part of the answer."
As tumors grow, they build a microenvironment, which develops its own blood supply and maintained. tumor prosperous, protected and greedily consuming all available nutrients
When T cells enter the microenvironment, it is as if they are "automobiles that had suddenly applied the emergency brake; they can not continue rolling, "explained Dr. Delgoffe. immunotherapies, such as those that target negative regulators on the surface of T cells, take these brakes off." However, what we find in many cases is that even if the brakes have been removed, there is no fuel in the tank, "said Dr. Delgoffe. Or - in scientific terms -. The absence of mitochondria in T cells infiltrating tumors that prevents run
"This is an exciting discovery because we have various strategies to" fill the fuel tank "and support T cell function in the microenvironment of the tumor, "said Dr. Delgoffe.
in laboratory experiments and tests with mice, Dr. Delgoffe and his team found that when they stimulated mitochondria in T cells, they were better able to clear the tumor.
Dr. Delgoffe is in partnership with other scientists to test different strategies stimulate mitochondria, including the use of drugs that have already been proven safe in humans, such as diabetes type 2, to boost metabolism of cells T. He also works with existing immunotherapy studies to further modify T cells so that their better metabolic functions in the tumor microenvironment.
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