Researchers Identify Protein That Makes Cancer Evade Cell Therapy

CAR T cell therapy is designed to use the immune system to find and eliminate cancer cells. This therapy is often used to treat types of aggressive blood cancers like lymphoma and leukemia. Prior studies have found that cancer cells have learned how to evade the immune system to avoid elimination.

Now researchers at City of Hope have discovered a protein that assists cancer cells in hiding from this treatment. During their study, the researchers discovered that YTHDF2 played a huge role in advancing blood cancer development.

The first author of the study, Zhen-Hua Chen, explained that uncovering the biological mechanisms behind the functions of this protein would aid in the creation of novel approaches to prevent cancerous cells from evading detection by the immune system.

The researchers determined that YTHDF2 worked by activating the genes that assist cancer cells to produce energy to fuel their ability to spread and grow. This protein also helped the cells hide themselves by decreasing the presence of antigen biomarkers that usually trigger the immune system to find and eliminate cancer cells.

According to mouse studies, excess YTHDF2 levels also transform healthy blood cells into cancerous cells.

Dr. Jianjun Chen, who was the study’s corresponding author, revealed that antigen escape was one of the obstacles that came with treating blood cancers. He explained that normally, treatments targeted the CD19 protein which was found on cancer cells, noting that in most cases though, cancer cells lost or lowered this marker and in turn, made therapies less effective.

While scientists are working on ways to target different factors, a lot of patients are still impacted by this issue.

To combat this protein, the researchers developed a new compound dubbed CC1-38 to target and suppress it, helping reduce the growth of these cancers. Dr. Chen added that the use of their medical compound to target this protein would substantially improve the effectiveness of CAR T cell therapy on cells of blood cancer.

Associate professor Xiaolan Deng, the study’s co-corresponding author, noted that decreasing the need for follow-up treatments could also improve long-term survival of cancer patients while lowering medical costs and side effects.

The researchers hope that their findings will aid in the development of more personalized treatments that improve the survival rates of cancer patients, particularly for patients who don’t respond to initial treatment or those who relapsed after initial response to T cell-based treatments.

The study’s findings were published in the Cell journal.

As enterprises like Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: SCNI) also undertake their own immunotherapy development programs, cancers could soon be effectively treated using this approach with minimal cases of malignant cells evading the therapies.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: SCNI) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/SCNI

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