A new study explains how pancreatic tumors use a sugar coating to hide from the immune system and shows that a newly developed antibody can restore immune responses in mice.
Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most difficult cancers to treat and frequently does not respond to even the latest immunotherapy approaches.
Researchers at Northwestern Medicine have now identified a previously unknown reason for this resistance. They found that pancreatic tumors shield themselves from immune attack by using a sugar-based signal that effectively tells immune cells not to respond. The team also developed an antibody treatment designed to interrupt this protective signal.
In a study published in Cancer Research, the researchers detailed this mechanism for the first time and demonstrated that blocking it with a monoclonal antibody restores immune activity against pancreatic cancer cells in preclinical mouse models.
“It took our team about six years to uncover this novel mechanism, develop the right antibodies and test them,” said study senior author Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“Seeing it work was a major breakthrough.” The study was recently published in the journal Cancer Research.
