Reporting in the journal Cell Reports, senior investigator Denis Guttridge, an assistant professor at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, and colleagues suggest immune therapy for cancer might be more effective if combined with drugs that inhibit NF-kB.
Deadly skin cancers in mice shrank in response to a new treatment that may complement other “immunotherapies” developed recently to boost the body’s own defenses against disease threats, according to a new study published by UC San Francisco researchers in the May 2014 edition of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.Continue reading
Rates of melanoma have been increasing significantly over the past 30 years. The skin cancer now accounts for around 5% of all new cancers in the US, and there are expected to be 76,100 new cases and 9,710 deaths from the disease this year.Continue reading
A recent study that investigates the effects of anti-CTLA-4 antibody on the number and types of T cells present in a patient’s blood. The results, which appear in the journal Science Translational Medicine, shed light on the mechanism of action of this type of cancer immunotherapy and suggest that immune repertoire sequencing could be used to predict which patients will have improved survival in response to treatment.Continue reading
New research published in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that autoimmune disorders and cancer may share a pathogenic connection.
Researchers from George Washington University in Washington, DC, and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, have found that tumors and the cells implicated in autoimmune diseases both express the same inhibitors of cell destruction.Continue reading
A research team from the University of Illinois at Chicago, publish their findings in Nature Communications.
Previous studies have connected cholesterol to certain cancers. For example, Medical News Today recently reported on a study that linked high cholesterol to increased breast cancer risk.
But for this latest study, the researchers focused on signaling pathways, which cells employ to carry out their activities. They explain that a pathway called canonical Wnt signaling encourages cell growth and division, an important function for development in embryonic cells.
However, in mature cells, overactivity of this pathway is believed to be a major promoter of cancer development.
When Prof. Cho and his team were searching for new cholesterol-binding proteins, they found a binding site for cholesterol located on a protein known as “Dishevelled.” This protein is involved in both canonical Wnt signaling and non-canonical Wnt signaling, which the team says is involved in cell movement and organization.
“Our research points to a new regulatory role for cholesterol,” says Prof. Cho, “and also presents an exciting new therapeutic target for suppressing canonical Wnt signaling to treat or prevent cancer.”
The team further describes Dishevelled as “a switch on the track,” meaning that when a signal reaches the protein, it directs the signal along either the canonical or the non-canonical Wnt pathway.
However, until now, it was unknown as to whether any particular element governed the decision for the protein to direct the signal down one pathway over the other.
This is where cholesterol comes in, explains Prof. Cho:
“Once we realized that cholesterol is able to bind specifically to Dishevelled, we became interested in cholesterol as a potential determinant of which of the Wnt signaling pathways gets activated.”
In detail, he and his team discovered that when cholesterol binds to Dishevelled, it sends the signal along the canonical Wnt signaling pathway – which encourages cell growth and division. Without cholesterol, this type of signaling cannot happen, they add.
Additionally, the researchers found that cholesterol increases within the cell membrane appeared to favor canonical Wnt signaling over non-canonical Wnt signaling. Prof. Cho says this may explain why higher cholesterol levels increase cancer risk.
The team says their findings could yield a therapeutic target, and Prof. Cho says a drug that prevents cholesterol from binding to Dishevelled could be effective against canonical Wnt signaling-driven cancers. This could include colon cancer, melanoma, breast cancer and lung cancer.
“We know that things like high-fat diets, which boost cholesterol levels, have been linked to an elevated incidence of cancer,” he says. “Our research provides a mechanism for how cholesterol promotes pathways that lead to cancer.”
A novel approach to cancer immunotherapy – strategies designed to induce the immune system to attack cancer cells – may provide a new and cost-effective weapon against some of the most deadly tumors, including ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center report in the Journal of Hematology & Oncology that a protein engineered to combine a molecule targeting a tumor-cell-surface antigen with another protein that stimulates several immune functions prolonged survival in animal models of both tumors.Continue reading