MONTREAL — Work being done in Montreal could soon make cancerous tumors even more vulnerable to immune system attack.
Doctor André Veillette and his colleagues at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute have developed a brand new antibody that allows certain cells of the immune system to identify and destroy cancer cells.
“We found some kind of alarm clock,” Doctor Veillette explained. It binds to cancer cells, exposes or unmasks a molecule on the surface of the cancer cells, and boom, it wakes up the immune system.
This discovery builds on the work of other researchers, including Nobel Prize winners, who have made immunotherapy the most revolutionary and promising development in the fight against cancer in the last fifteen or twenty years.
However, recalled Dr. Veillette, not all cancers and all patients can currently be treated with immunotherapy, so work needs to continue to find new ways to encourage the immune system to attack and destroy cancer cells.
In this context, Dr. Veillette and his team for macrophages, cells of the immune system that are able not only to “eat” problem cells, the researcher said, but also to recruit other immune cells as reinforcements.
“It is a very important component of the immune system that is underutilized in the treatment of all types of diseases, including the treatment of cancer,” said Dr. Violette.
IRCM researchers have finally developed a new antibody, Z10, that unmasks a molecule on the surface of cancer tumors, making them more recognizable to macrophages.
In tests on mice, the use of the Z10 antibody in combination with checkpoint inhibitors (drugs that enable the immune system to fight cancer) resulted in tumors almost completely disappearing. However, to achieve the desired effect, the two substances must be used together; There is no effect when used alone.
“It’s great to expand knowledge, but at the same time you can develop new tools to treat really sick people with real diseases, then it becomes exciting,” said Dr. Violette.