Smart molecule aids natural cancer defenses
Cancer cells secrete signaling proteins that prevent immune cells called macrophages from attacking tumors. Ashish Kulkarni at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Shiladitya Sengupta at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and their colleagues sought to create a molecular mechanism that could shut down these defenses.
The team designed a ‘supramolecule’ that both inhibits a protein called CSF-1R, which receives signals that can switch off macrophages’ anti-tumor response, and blocks a pathway that tumors signal through to prevent macrophages engulfing them.
Treatment with the supramolecule reduced tumor growth in mice with aggressive breast cancer and melanoma, and increased the engulfment of cancer cells by macrophages.
Date: July 04 | 2018
Source: Nature
