Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"A research team ... has discovered a mechanism that helps acute myeloid leukemia cells to evade the body's immune system. By developing an antibody that blocks the mechanism, the researchers could restore the immune system's ability to kill the cancer cells in laboratory trials and in mice. ..."
"... Immunotherapy has improved the treatment for many cancers, but progress has been limited in leukemia. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is particularly intractable, with a five-year survival rate of just over 30 per cent. The existing treatments are often aggressive and may include both strong chemotherapy and stem cell transplantations. ...
In the new study, the researchers identified a previously unknown surface protein that is expressed on the leukemia stem cells, but not on healthy blood stem cells. The discovery was enabled by a large-scale mapping of proteins in leukemia stem cells in bone marrow samples from three patients with particularly intractable AML. The mapping was then compared with the blood stem cells of healthy individuals. It was then that the researchers discovered the surface protein, SLAMF6, was only expressed on the diseased cells. The finding was then validated in an additional 50 AML patients. ..."
From the abstract:
"Immunotherapy has shown limited success in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), indicating an incomplete understanding of the underlying immunoregulatory mechanisms.
Here we identify an immune evasion mechanism present in 60% of AML cases, wherein primitive AML cells aberrantly express the lymphoid surface protein SLAMF6 (signaling lymphocyte activation molecule family member 6).
Knockout of SLAMF6 in AML cells enables T cell activation and highly efficient killing of leukemia cells in coculture systems, demonstrating that SLAMF6 protects AML cells from recognition and elimination by the immune system in a mode analogous to the programmed cell death protein–ligand (PDL1/PD1) axis. Targeting SLAMF6 with an antibody against the SLAMF6 dimerization site inhibits the SLAMF6–SLAMF6 interaction and induces T cell activation and killing of AML cells both in vitro and in humanized in vivo models.
In conclusion, we show that aberrant expression of SLAMF6 is a common and targetable immune escape mechanism that could pave the way for immunotherapy in AML."
New mechanism revealed: How leukemia cells trick the immune system (original news release)
Aberrant expression of SLAMF6 constitutes a targetable immune escape mechanism in acute myeloid leukemia (open access)
Fig. 2: SLAMF6 is expressed in a wide spectrum of AML cases.
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