TREM2 Inhibition as a Potentially Broadly Effective Cancer Therapy

It remains the case that far too much of the extensively funded work on cancer therapies is only relevant to a tiny subset of cancers. This is no way to achieve success in the fight to control cancer: there is only so much funding, only so many researchers, and too many types of cancer for an incremental strategy to make earnest process over the next few decades. The important lines of research into cancer treatments are those that can in principle be applied to many (or preferably all) cancers, and that are in principle highly effective, such as inhibition of telomere lengthening. The ideal cancer therapy is one that can be delivered systemically throughout the body, and will effectively destroy any and all cancers that it encounters. That therapy could then be mass manufactured, at costs crushed down by the logistics of scale, and given to all cancer patients. Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment by stimulating the patient's own immune system to attack cancer cells, yielding remarkably quick and complete remission in some cases. But such drugs work for less than a quarter of patients because tumors are notoriously adept at evading immune assault. Now a new study has found that the effects of a standard immunotherapy drug can be enhanced by blocking the protein TREM2, resulting in complete elimination of tumors. "An antibody against TREM2 alone reduces the growth of certain tumors, and when we combine it with an immunotherapy drug, we see total rejectio...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs