Cancer Immunity tagged posts

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Aalborg University in Denmark have found that vitamin D encourages the growth of a type of gut bacteria in mice which improves immunity to cancer.

Reported today in Science, the researchers found that mice given a diet rich in vitamin D had better immune resistance to experimentally transplanted cancers and improved responses to immunotherapy treatment. This effect was also seen when gene editing was used to remove a protein that binds to vitamin D in the blood and keeps it away from tissues.

Surprisingly, the team found th...

WEHI researchers have discovered a key differentiation process that provides an essential immune function in helping to control cancer and infectious diseases.

The research, published in Science Immunology, is the first to show a new factor — DC-SCRIPT — is required for the function a particular type of dendritic cell — called cDC1 — that is essential in controlling the immune response to infection.

Led by WEHI Professor Stephen Nutt, Dr Michael Chopin and Mr Shengbo Zhang, it defines the role for a new regulatory protein in producing dendritic cells...