A hidden army in the skin<\/p>\n
Macrophages are a type of immune cell that makes up as much as 30% of the cells within a melanoma tumour. While they have long been known to play a role in cancer, there has been little clarity around whether they help or hinder tumour growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the past, researchers have tried indiscriminately eliminating all the macrophages in the body to see how it affects the tumour.<\/p>\n
However, Dr Keith\u2019s team found that not all macrophages in the skin were the same, identifying one particular subpopulation that expressed a protein called CD169. By specifically targeting and depleting these CD169-positive macrophages, they found the tumours grew larger. This shows that these specific macrophages were preventing the melanoma from growing.<\/p>\n
Watching cancer cells being eaten in real time<\/p>\n
The team used intravital two-photon microscopy \u2013 an advanced imaging technique that allows them to watch biological processes unfold at the cellular level inside living organisms. In mice, the researchers observed the CD169-positive macrophages physically engulfing live melanoma cells. To confirm the clinical relevance of their real-time footage, the team also analysed human tissue, finding these same macrophages present in healthy human skin and enriched around the margins of human melanoma tumours.<\/p>\n
\u201cMacrophages have always been known as the body\u2019s housekeepers \u2013 they clear away dead cells and debris,\u201d explains UNSW Conjoint Professor Tri Phan, senior author on the paper. \u201cWhat Dr Keith caught on camera was these cells actively nibbling away and engulfing live cancer cells, constraining tumour growth. Critically, this attack appears to occur independently of T cells and B cells \u2013 the immune players most commonly credited with fighting cancer \u2013 which made the discovery unexpected, and genuinely exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hidden army in the skin Macrophages are a type of immune cell that makes up as much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,69596,137,111612,111613,337,128,69597,69598],"class_list":["post-686392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-division-of-equity-diversity-inclusion","tag-health","tag-healthy-lives","tag-medicine-health","tag-research","tag-science","tag-sdg","tag-sdg3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}