Immune system offers clues to cancer treatment

Immune system offers clues to cancer treatment

Molecular signatures hint at who will benefit from next-generation cancer drugs.

(http://www.nature.com/news/immune-system-offers-clues-to-cancer-treatment-1.16395)

In the quest to develop personalized cancer therapies, researchers are increasingly examining an individual's immune response to cancer to find ways to tailor treatments.

The shift comes with the emergence of therapies designed to unleash the immune system on cancer cells. Five studies in the 27 November issue of Nature1–5 turn to the immune system to investigate which patients are likely to respond to cancer drugs that inhibit the activity of a protein called PD-1, and how tumours trigger immune responses. The approach is in contrast to earlier attempts at personalised therapies that focused on the tumour itself.

“We’re looking at a very different biomarker paradigm,” says Thomas Powles, an oncologist at the Queen Mary University of London, and lead author of one of the papers1. “We’re not focusing on the tumour cells, we’re focusing on the immune cells around the tumour.”

The PD-1 receptor on some T cells sends them into hibernation when bound to signaling protein PD-L1. This mechanism, which normally prevents autoimmune reactions, can be co-opted by opportunistic tumour cells to help them evade the immune system. Tumours that express PD-L1 are sometimes surrounded by a phalanx of impotent T cells.

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References

• Powles, T. et al. Nature 515, 558–562 (2014).

• Herbst, R. S. et al. Nature 515, 563–567 (2014).

• Tumeh, P. C. et al. Nature 515, 568–571 (2014).

• Yadav, M. et al. Nature 515, 572–576 (2014).

• Gubin, M. M. et al. Nature 515, 577–581 (2014).t

• Topalian, S. L. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 366, 2443–2454 (2012).