A new technology has shown promise in treating several types of tumors in mice that do not respond to cancer immunotherapy medications called checkpoint inhibitors.
Results from tests of the so-called Y-trap technology were reported in the article, “Bifunctional immune checkpoint-targeted antibody-ligand traps that simultaneously disable TGFβ enhance the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy,” that was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Y-traps target the same proteins as existing checkpoint inhibitors: cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death-1 (PD-1)/PD-1 ligand (PD-L1). These proteins are known to help certain white blood cell, called Tregs, suppress anti-tumor immune responses.
In this way, checkpoint inhibitors are expected to free the immune system to attack and kill tumor cells. However, in practice, checkpoint inhibitors work only in some cancer patients.
“The immune system is naturally able to detect and eliminate tumor cells. However, virtually all cancers — including the most common cancers, from lung, breast and colon cancers to melanomas and lymphomas — evolve to counteract and defeat such immune surveillance by co-opting and amplifying natural mechanisms of immune suppression,” Atul Bedi, MD, senior author of the study, said in a press release. Bedi is an associate professor of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Source: Immuno-Oncology News
