Bioengineer.org news story
People living with HIV face a higher risk of many cancers that are not classically classified as AIDS-defining, and non-small cell lung cancer sits prominently among them. For decades, the leading explanations centered on higher smoking prevalence, chronic inflammation, and co-infection with oncogenic viruses. A recent study now points to a far more specific and unsettling mechanism: HIV appears to strip the immune system of its ability to recognize tumor neoepitopes, the mutant protein fragments that normally mark cancer cells for destruction, without altering the tumor’s mutational profile at all.
Read the full news story here.