Activator of anti-cancer immunity
Researchers have revealed a new mechanism of "activation" of the immune system in the fight against cancer
Dmitry Mazalevsky, Naked Science
According to a new study published in the journal Nature (Ishizuka et al., Loss of ADAR1 in tumours overcomes resistance to immune checkpoint blockade), a new mechanism for activating the immune system to fight cancer will allow immune cells to detect and destroy cancer cells much more effectively than it was done before. The international group of researchers was led by Harvard Medical School Professor Nick Haining in collaboration with Professor Erez Levanon and doctoral student Ilana Buchumansky from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Bar-Ilan University (Israel).
The main focus of the scientists' work is on the mechanism that usually serves the cell by labeling genes similar to human viruses so as not to identify them as viruses. In his study, Professor Levanon, together with a team from Harvard, found that by suppressing this mechanism, the immune system can be used to fight cancer cells in a more effective way, being most useful in lung cancer and melanoma.
"We found that if the mechanism is blocked, the immune system becomes much more sensitive. When the mechanism is deactivated, the immune system becomes more aggressive towards tumors," Levanon emphasizes. Most patients with cancer either do not respond to the blockade of the immune checkpoint, or develop resistance to it – often due to acquired mutations that impair the presentation of the antigen. In their study, the scientists showed for the first time that the loss of the function of the RNA-editing enzyme ADAR1 in tumor cells makes it possible to prepare tumors for immunotherapy and overcome resistance to checkpoint blockade.
In recent years, a new generation of anti-cancer drugs has been developed that block proteins that inhibit immune activity against malignant tumors. These drugs have demonstrated significant results in the fight against several types of tumors. In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to James Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who discovered the key genes of this mechanism. Despite this achievement, the current generation of drugs helps only a small number of patients, while most drugs are unable to force the immune system to attack the tumor. There is hope among scientists that this discovery will make a step forward in this matter, and a number of companies have already begun research to find drugs that will work on the basis of this discovery.
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