It's a really exciting area, and lots of people are trying to find different ways to make immunotherapy work in more people,' Susan Kaech told Newsweek.
One indicator as to whether a patient will respond to immunotherapy is the state of their mitochondria—the energy-producing powerhouses of the cell.
"Mitochondria play a multifaceted role in cancer, contrary to some initial ideas that they are switched off and redundant to cancer development," Tom MacVicar, an expert in mitochondrial reprogramming in cancer also at the University of Glasgow and Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, told"For instance, they drive the biosynthesis of macromolecules which are essential for cancer cell growth and proliferation.
"I call this the double whammy," Kaech said."That was really the crux of this study—to better understand how tumors acquire the metabolic state that gives them a growth advantage as well as an ability to evade the immune system. And the mitochondria was a big focus because of its role in metabolism.""The major discovery of our paper was serendipitous," Kaech said.
Artist's impression of a tumor cell that has mutated to evade the immune system. Immunotherapy boosts our immune system's ability to recognize and destroy these tumor cells.As the"policeman" cells of the immune system patrol our bodies, our cells display a range of molecules on their surfaces, which act as a sort of molecular ID to indicate that they are healthy.
Exactly how this mitochondrial rewiring would be targeted to tumor cells is still a challenge."If you give that drug systemically to the person then you're obviously going to have serious toxicity problems," Gammage said."We need to find a way to use this information to make it actionable. That's the big challenge and it's an active area of research."
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