A temporary structure of the tumor was discovered

Scientists have demonstrated how tumor cells can evade immunotherapy by producing unique, temporary intercellular structures in which internal cells remain intact and can return to a single tumor cell

The findings, published today in the journal eLife, provide a new theory

"Cancer immunotherapy uses the body's immune system to fight cancer

To determine how tumors recur after immunotherapy, Carmi and his team first compared the genome-wide genome sequences

Next, the team studied the process in breast cancer and melanoma, using a mouse model

To better describe the tumor cells that survived in mice after immunotherapy, the researchers isolated and studied live tumor cells

To prove that this result is not due to the isolation of melanoma cells, the team also analyzed tumors with fluorescently labeled nuclei and cell membranes

The team next tested whether this phenomenon could occur in

Finally, they examined the clinical relevance of this finding by analyzing the cancerous tissue of multiple organs in four patients with stage 4 melanoma

Senior author Yaron Carmi, lead researcher in the Department of Pathology at Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine, said: "This previously unknown mechanism of tumor resistance highlights the limitations

Amit Gutwillig, Nadine Santana-Magal, Leen Farhat-Younis, Diana Rasoulouniriana, Asaf Madi, Chen Luxenburg, Jonathan Cohen, Krishnanand Padmanabhan, Noam Shomron, Guy Shapira, Annette Gleiberman, Roma Parikh, Carmit Levy, Meora Feinmesser, Dov Hershkovitz, Valentina Zemser-Werner, Oran Zlotnik, Sanne Kroon, Wolf-Dietrich Hardt, Reno Debets, Nathan Edward Reticker-Flynn , Peleg Rider, Yaron Carmi.