Nat Cancer: There's hope for treating many types of cancer! A new type of immunotherapy has entered early clinical trials!

16, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Nature Cancer, scientists from Cancer Research UK and others have developed a new experimental drug that could use the body's own immune system to launch a two-pronged sniping effect on cancer.
researchers say the new immunotherapy drug, which targets inhibitory regulatory immune cells that act inside tumors and significantly improves the survival of animal models even without the use of other drugs, could lead to the development of a new type of immunotherapy to treat cancer patients with high levels of specific types of immune cells, such as melanoma, certain lung cancers and head and neck cancer, which are currently in the early stages of clinical trials to determine their safety in cancer patients.
file photo: Cancer Research UK regulatory T cells (Tregs) usually act as the body's immune system brake, which suppresses overactivation of the immune system, after previous studies have shown that Tregs can be present in large numbers in tumors, but also inhibit the removal of tumor cells by other immune cells, a major marker of Treg immune cells is CD25 protein, CD25 protein is found in large numbers on the cell surface. the
-targeted CD25 drug was previously thought to kill regulatory T-cells while releasing brakes that weaken the body's immune system, but so far researchers have not fulfilled that expectation, and in this study, researchers have revealed why, and have developed more effective drugs to target these cells and release the body's anti-cancer immune response. Sergio Quezada, a researcher at
, says it has been a complex puzzle for years about why using other drugs to target CD25 is not as effective as expected, and now by going back to basic biology and revealing the mechanisms behind the protein, researchers have found that targeting the CD25 protein may be the right approach, but they need to target different parts of the protein.
targeting inhibitory Tregs may reduce the body's immune response to disease, after drugs that targeted CD25 inadvertently affected cancer-killing effect T-cells in tumors.
the new antibody drug, developed by the researchers, was able to bind to different parts of the CD25 protein (unlike other sites where other drugs are currently available), and they also observed the powerful effects of the drug in a variety of cancer animal models, some of which produced nearly 100 percent response.
The new drug not only eliminates regulatory immune cells that slow the body's response to cancer, but also activates immune cells that kill cancer cells, a two-pronged approach that may provide researchers with the opportunity to significantly improve the network of tumor cells inside and around tumors so that they can no longer protect cancer cells but begin fighting them.
The success of the drug in preclinical trials, researchers are now conducting Phase 1 clinical trials to ensure its safety and effectiveness, said researcher Professor Karen Vousden, whose study is a very typical example of how cancer research in the laboratory can help develop new experimental therapies for cancer patients The therapy that activates the body's immune response to cancer has now changed the treatment of many cancer patients, but it is only effective for a small number of patients, and one way to make immunotherapy more effective is to try to target regulatory T cells because it limits the body's immune response, but such attempts may not be successful. In the
study, researchers revealed why previous attempts by scientists have failed, and they have developed a special antibody with no excess activity that produces a powerful anti-tumor response in mouse bodies, and are currently conducting clinical trials to test its potential and effectiveness against multiple types of cancer.
() Original source: Solomon, I., Amann, M., Goubier, A. et al. CD25-Treg-depleting antibodies preserving IL-2 signaling on effector T cells enhance effector activation and antitumor immunity. Nat Cancer (2020). doi:10.1038/s43018-020-00133-0