New research could expand use of cancer immunotherapy

Our own immune cells could be the key to killing more types of cancer, new research from Cardiff University suggests.

Researchers from Cardiff University have found that by increasing the amount of the molecule L-selectin on T-cells can vastly improve their ability to fight solid tumours.

According to the researchers, their work means that immunotherapy could be used to target most cancers, with patients benefitting further as this treatment doesn’t damage healthy cells.

Immunotherapy has so far only been used in the clinical to treat patients with certain types of leukaemia. The reason for this is as cancer cells circulate in leukaemia patients’ blood, it’s easier for immunotherapy treatments to find and attack the cancer cells. However, trying to treat solid tumours with immunotherapy is much harder as the blood flow to them is poor and the blood vessels inside the are not properly formed.

Professor Ager, from Cardiff University’s Systems Immunity Research Institute, said: “Knowing that L-selectin is an important homing molecule on T-cells, that directs their movement from the bloodstream and into inflamed tissues, we wanted to find out whether increasing L-selectin on anti-cancer T-cells would improve homing to the cancer, and help to destroy it.

“Our results were surprising. While increased L-selectin did improve the ability of T-cells to fight solid tumours it wasn’t because of better homing. The modified T-cells entered solid cancers within the first hour and kept accumulating inside the solid cancers over more than a week, suggesting that L-selectin also plays a role in activation and retention of anti-cancer T-cells inside cancers.”

Dr John Maher, from King’s College London, added: “This research revealing a new role for L-selectin in cancer immunotherapy offers great promise as a novel device to enhance the efficacy of engineered T-cell immunotherapies for solid tumours.”