{"id":1300,"date":"2018-07-18T02:56:24","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T07:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/?p=1300"},"modified":"2018-10-10T21:47:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T02:47:06","slug":"combination-immune-cells-improves-successful-immunotherapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/combination-immune-cells-improves-successful-immunotherapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Combination of Immune Cells Improves Chances of Successful Immunotherapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Combination<\/a><\/p>\n

Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors is more effective in cancer patients who have elevated numbers of specific types of immune cells inside their tumors, a study suggests.\u00a0Patients with a favorable combination of immune cells respond better to immunotherapies and benefit from improved overall survival.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those findings also can help clinicians predict which patients will benefit most from therapy with\u00a0checkpoint inhibitors, or modify the immune response of patients to increase their chances of successful treatment.<\/p>\n

The study, \u201cA natural killer-dendritic cell axis defines checkpoint therapy\u2013responsive tumor microenvironments,<\/u>\u201d was published in the journal\u00a0Nature Medicine<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a combination of experiments done in mouse models and human tumor samples, the study shows that when immune cells known as natural killer (NK) cells are activated in the tumors, they help boost the immune response against the tumor and improve the patient\u2019s response to immunotherapy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cancers are frequently able to evade the immune system by expressing checkpoint proteins that work as \u201cbrakes\u201d to keep immune responses in check.<\/span><\/p>\n

Normally, these brakes prevent the immune system from attacking the body\u2019s own tissues, but in cancer cells they keep the T-cells of the immune system from killing the tumor.<\/span><\/p>\n

A new type of anti-cancer drug called\u00a0checkpoint inhibitors\u00a0work by blocking the checkpoint proteins made by immune system cells, such as T-cells, and some cancer cells. Examples of these medicines are the anti-PD1 therapies\u00a0Keytruda\u00a0(pembrolizumab<\/a><\/span><\/strong>) and\u00a0Opdivo\u00a0<\/a>(nivolumab<\/a><\/span><\/strong>).<\/span><\/p>\n

When checkpoint proteins are blocked, the T-cells\u2019 response to tumors is reactivated and able to kill cancer cells more efficiently. Therapy with checkpoint inhibitors therapy has shown promising results, by successfully eliminating malignancies in about 20 to 40 percent of patients with melanoma and other types of cancer. However, there is still a large proportion of patients who do not respond to these therapies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers believe the answer to that lies in the diversity of immune cells present inside the tumor or its surroundings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to stimulate T cells to attack cancer, do you need to recruit any specific allies in the tumor first?\u201d\u00a0Matthew Krummel, PhD, professor of pathology, member of the\u00a0University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center,\u00a0and senior author of the study, said in\u00a0press release. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know who were the good and bad partners within the immune system, so we began systematically taking apart tumors and asking of every cell type that was in it, \u2018Can you activate T cells?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Krummel\u2019s lab found a kind of immune cells called\u00a0stimulatory dendritic cells (SDCs) were required for more robust T-cell responses. Without SDCs, T-cells were unable to respond effectively to checkpoint inhibitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, for SDCs to be recruited and survive within tumors, another kind of immune cells was needed. Those are the NK (natural killer) cells, and usually act as first responders to detect cancer cells.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the fascinating discoveries here is that we\u2019ve long known that natural killer cells \u2014 as their name implies \u2014 can also kill cancer cells directly,\u201d Krummel said. \u201cBut here we are discovering that their power doesn\u2019t lie just in their ability to eliminate threats, but also in their ability to communicate with other immune cells.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Using tumor samples from melanoma patients and mouse models, the scientists identified NK cells as the core partners in the tumor community of immune cells, which control the levels of SDCs inside the tumor by releasing a specific messenger molecule (cytokine).<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside the tumor, NK cells also seem to be in close contact with SDCs, helping them to survive. In melanoma patients, the numbers of both SDCs and NK cells significantly correlate with a patient\u2019s responsiveness to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, suggesting that the crosstalk between NK cells and SDCs in the tumor is crucial to the patient\u2019s outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis was very exciting because there are currently examples of new immunotherapies targeting NK cells being tested in the clinic,\u201d\u00a0Kevin Barry, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at UCSF, and lead author of the study said. \u201cIf you could successfully find a way to increase NK cells in patients\u2019 tumors, that could be a way to boost SDC levels and produce better responses to current immunotherapies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another potential application of the findings is to find biomarkers \u2014 in the blood, for instance \u2014 of the presence of NK cells and SDCs to identify patients who are most likely to benefit from immunotherapy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently we depend on biopsies or surgically removed tumor samples, but if we could find correlates in the blood, it would make for [a] really useful clinical tool to identify patients who are likely to have a great response to immunotherapy,\u201d Barry said.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source:https:\/\/immuno-oncologynews.com\/2018\/06\/29\/combination-immune-cells-improves-immunotherapy-success\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors is more effective in cancer patients who have elevated numbers of specific types of immune cells inside their tumors, a study suggests.\u00a0Patients with a favorable combination of immuneRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,109],"tags":[138,136,74,135,137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-biolabs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}