immunotherapy tagged posts

Normal and cancerous pancreatic tissue. The blue background represents the cells that produce digestive juices supplied by the pancreas to the gut, and the red dots—seen only in the cancerous pancreas—represent the bacteria found to be a thousand times more abundant than normal.

Antibiotics may make immunotherapy more effective against pancreatic cancer. The population of bacteria in the pancreas increases more than a thousand fold in patients with pancreatic cancer, and becomes dominated by species that prevent the immune system from attacking tumor cells. These are the findings of a study conducted in mice and in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), a form of cancer that is usually fatal within two years...

Two images of EVIR-engineered dendritic cells (green) capturing tumor antigens in exosomes (gold/red). Cell nuclei are colored blue. Credit: C. Cianciaruso/M. De Palma/EPFL

Researchers at EPFL have created artificial molecules that can help the immune system to recognize and attack cancer tumors. Immunotherapies are breakthrough treatments that stimulate the patient’s immune cells to attack the tumor through the recognition of tumor antigens. They can be very effective, but currently can only cure a minority of patients with solid tumors. Researchers and physicians are now looking into ways of increasing the precision and strength of the immune attack on the tumor.

One approach is the “dendritic cell vaccine...

Cancer immunotherapy under the microscope: In the center of the image, three killer cells (violet, smaller) attack a cancer cell (violet, larger; leukemia cells are shown here). Credit: Schliemann et al.: Cancer Immunol Res 2015, 3: 547

The use of immunotherapy to treat cancer is celebrating its first successes but there are still many knowledge gaps in the underlying mechanisms of action. In a study of mice with soft tissue tumors, ETH researchers have now shown how endogenous killer cells track down the tumors with the help of dormant viruses. The promising drug is F8-TNF. When injected into the bloodstream, it lures killer cells towards sarcomas which destroys the tumors...

Targeting just one of the genes – known as Spns2 – led to a three-quarters reduction in the spread of skin cancer tumours, pictured under the microscope,, the experts found

A new biological target for drugs to reduce the spread of tumours in cancer patients has been found by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Published in Nature today, the study with genetically modified mice found 23 genes out of 810 unique genes that either increased or decreased the spread of skin tumour cells to the lungs. Many of these genes also caused an alteration in the immune system, such as changing the bodies’ ability to fight infection. The researchers showed that targeting one of these genes – Spns2 – led to a 3/4 reduction in tumour metastasis.

Removal of the Spns2 gene caused the largest change, reducing ...