{"id":703,"date":"2018-08-10T06:50:38","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T06:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=703"},"modified":"2018-08-10T06:50:38","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T06:50:38","slug":"decoded-how-cancer-cells-cripple-immune-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"Decoded: How cancer cells cripple immune system"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York,\u00a0<\/strong>Researchers have found that cancer cells send out biological “drones” to fight the immune system and survive.<\/p>\n

The study showed that cancer cells release “drones” — small vesicles called exosomes circulating in the blood and armed with proteins called PD-L1 that cause T-cells to tire before they have a chance to reach the tumour.<\/p>\n

The research offers a paradigm-shifting picture of how cancers take a systemic approach to suppressing the immune system.<\/p>\n

In addition, it also points to a new way to predict which cancer patients will respond to anti-PD1 therapy that disrupts immune suppression to fight tumours.<\/p>\n

“Immunotherapies are life-saving for many patients with metastatic melanoma, but about 70 per cent of these patients don’t respond,” said Guo Wei, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

“These treatments are costly and have toxic side effects so it would be very helpful to know which patients are going to respond,” Wei added.<\/p>\n

Anti-PD1 therapy blocks interaction between PD-1 — a protein on the surface of T-cells — and PD-L1, PD-1’s counterpart molecule on tumour cells, thus reinvigorating T-cells and allowing them to unleash killing power on the tumour.<\/p>\n

In the study, published in the journal Nature, the team found that exosomes from human melanoma cells also carried PD-L1 on their surface. Exosomal PD-L1 can directly bind to and inhibit T-cell functions.<\/p>\n

Identification of the exosomal PD-L1 secreted by tumour cells provides a major update to the immune checkpoint mechanism, and offers novel insight into tumour immune evasion.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, exosomes are tiny lipid-encapsulated vesicles with a diameter less than 1\/100 of a red blood cell.<\/p>\n

Since a single tumour cell is able to secrete many copies of exosomes, the interaction between the PD-L1 exosomes and T-cells provides a systemic and highly effective means to suppress anti-tumour immunity in the whole body. This may explain why cancer patients might have weakened immune system, they noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York,\u00a0Researchers have found that cancer cells send out biological “drones” to fight the immune system and survive. The study showed that cancer cells release “drones” — small vesicles called exosomes circulating in the blood and armed with proteins called PD-L1 that cause T-cells to tire before they have a chance to reach the tumour. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}