Deadly pancreatic tumours evade attack by the immune system by developing a stroma — a shell of connective tissue enmeshed with white blood cells that suppress the immune response. Robert Vonderheide at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his team now report a way to reverse this immune suppression.
The authors studied 21 patients undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, and added an antibody that stimulates a protein called CD40 to their treatment regimen. CD40 is known to activate certain types of immune cell, including tumour-specific T cells. Tumours in four of the patients regressed.
The scientists repeated the treatment regime in mice genetically engineered to develop similar pancreatic cancers. About 30% of mouse tumours regressed, with holes appearing in the stroma. Surprisingly, the immune cell responsible for killing tumour and stroma cells was not the T cell but the macrophage.
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Hide no more, tumour. Nature 471, 550–551 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471550d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471550d