A novel way around cancer’s defenses
Tumors have devised a way to disarm one of the body’s most reliable weapons against infection. So scientists made an evolutionary tweak, creating a new treatment that looks promising enough to build a company around.
As STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney reports, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine homed in on interleukin-18, a powerful cytokine that normally galvanizes an immune response to unwanted presences, like tumors. Cancer, in its infinite trickery, has evolved to nullify IL-18 with a decoy receptor. So the researchers screened hundreds of millions of mutated IL-18s until they came up with one that could escape the decoy and trigger the immune system in the process.
The result, dubbed DR-18, performed well in mouse studies, fighting tumors and stimulating immune cells. Now they’ve formed a venture-backed startup, Simcha Therapeutics, with plans to begin human studies next year.
Read more.
As STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney reports, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine homed in on interleukin-18, a powerful cytokine that normally galvanizes an immune response to unwanted presences, like tumors. Cancer, in its infinite trickery, has evolved to nullify IL-18 with a decoy receptor. So the researchers screened hundreds of millions of mutated IL-18s until they came up with one that could escape the decoy and trigger the immune system in the process.
The result, dubbed DR-18, performed well in mouse studies, fighting tumors and stimulating immune cells. Now they’ve formed a venture-backed startup, Simcha Therapeutics, with plans to begin human studies next year.
Read more.
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