Tag : Chemoimmunotherapy

Washington: Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have designed cancer-fighting nanoparticles that co-deliver a chemotherapy drug and a novel immunotherapy. The new immunotherapy approach silences a gene that the researchers discovered was involved in immunosuppression. When combined with an existing chemotherapy drug and packaged into tiny nanoparticles, the therapy shrunk tumours in mouse colon and pancreatic cancer models. The findings were published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "There are two innovative aspects of our study: the discovery of a new therapeutic target and a new nanocarrier that is very effective in selective delivery of immunotherapy and chemotherapeutic drugs," said senior author Song Li, M.D., PhD, professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Pitt School of Pharmacy and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center investigator. "I'm excited about this research because it's highly translational. We don't know yet whether our approach works in patients, but our findings suggest that there is a lot of potential." Chemotherapy is a pillar of cancer treatment, but residual cancer cells can persist and cause tumour relapse. This process involves a lipid called phosphatidylserine (PS), which is usually found inside the tumour cell membrane's inner layer but migrates to the cell surface in response to chemotherapy drugs. On the surface, PS acts as an immunosuppressant, protecting the remaining cancer cells from the immune system. The Pitt researchers found that treatment with chemotherapy drugs fluorouracil and oxoplatin (FuOXP) led to increased levels of Xkr8, a protein that controls the distribution of PS on the cell membrane. This finding suggested that blocking Xkr8 would prevent cancer cells from shunting PS to the ...