A study led by Andr\u00e9 Veillette, a researcher at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Montreal, sheds new light on the complexity of the immune system and its role in cancer treatment. The study, published in\u00a0Science Immunology, highlights how a deeper understanding of immune \u201cbrakes\u201d could lead to more effective therapies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The immune system uses built-in mechanisms\u2014known as\u00a0inhibitory immune checkpoints\u2014to prevent attacks on healthy cells. While they are essential for\u00a0maintaining\u00a0balance, these checkpoints can also prevent the immune system from attacking cancer cells. To counter this, scientists have developed\u00a0checkpoint blockers, a class of drugs that release these brakes and help the immune system fight cancer. However, these treatments\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0work for all patients or all types of cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCheckpoint pathways are far more complex than we once thought,\u201d\u00a0explains Dr.\u00a0Zhenghai\u00a0Tang, lead author of the study and former researcher in\u00a0Dr. Andr\u00e9 Veillette\u2019s lab at the IRCM, now based at the University of Macau. \u201cTo improve treatments, we need to understand how these brakes function at a molecular level.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study focused on two key checkpoint molecules:\u00a0SIRP\u03b1, found on immune cells called macrophages, and\u00a0CD47, present on many cells including cancer cells. When these two molecules interact, they send a \u201cdon\u2019t eat me\u201d signal that prevents macrophages from destroying cancer cells.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By blocking the interaction between SIRP\u03b1\u00a0and CD47, the researchers were able to reduce the inhibitory signal by about 50%. Surprisingly, the remaining half of the signal persisted even without CD47\u2014suggesting that\u00a0SIRP\u03b1\u00a0can suppress immune responses through other pathways.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This finding helps explain why therapies targeting CD47 alone have shown limited success. \u201cTo make these treatments more effective,\u201d says Dr. Tang, \u201cwe may need to block all the ways SIRP\u03b1\u00a0suppresses the immune system\u2014not just its link to CD47.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A study led by Andr\u00e9 Veillette, a researcher at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and a professor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[121739,49,48,7714,59812,97286,84,1058,994],"class_list":["post-263235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-andre-veillette","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cancer","tag-department-of-medicine","tag-faculty-of-medicine","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}