Virus-mimicking drug helps immune system target cunning cancer cells

This study helps us understand the interdependence between interferon signaling and antigen presentation, which gives us important insights into how tumor cells are recognized by the immune system,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Antoni Ribas, a professor of medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine and director of the tumor immunology program at the Jonsson Cancer Center. “New strategies to promote antigen presentation to make tumors more visible to the immune system will allow immunotherapy to be effective for even more tumor types.”The findings also highlight the potential of other promising clinical approaches that bypass tumor interferon signaling and antigen presentation, like CAR, or chimeric antigen receptor –based T cell therapy, which can recognize and kill tumor cells even in absence of antigen presentation.Kalbasi is now leading a human clinical trial of the combination therapy of nivolumab, an immune checkpoint blockade drug, and BO-112 in people with certain types of sarcoma who are undergoing radiation followed by surgery. The idea is to activate the immune system against the patient ’s tumor while the tumor is still in the body.The research is a collaboration with colleagues at Highlight Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in Spain that has developed and tested BO-112 in early-phase clinical trials in Europe. The work was supported in part by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the National Institutes of Health.Other UCL...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news