By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Astudy conducted at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science lays the foundation toward a possible cancer breakthrough in the form of immunotherapy that will exploit a unique immune system weapon in the battle against cancer: naturally produced antibodies.
Antibodies are proteins that neutralize specific threats. Other recent studies have found that naturally occurring antibodies have often been discovered in cancerous tumors, but their purpose was unknown; they might very well have been generated by the body, without any relation to the cancer itself.
Indirect evidence, however, had suggested that they do offer some sort of antitumor benefit: Patients who survive longer than others and are more responsive to anticancer drugs were found to have higher concentrations of the antibody-producing B cells in their tumors. Still, there was no way of determining whether these cells, and the antibodies they make, contribute to improved survival – and if so, how they accomplish that feat.
© Provided by The Jerusalem PostThe Weizmann Institute of Science is seen in Rehovot, Israel. (credit: WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE)
The new findings, published in the journal Cell, managed to identify – out of the thousands of proteins in cancer cells – a molecule that is targeted by the newly identified antibodies: the membrane-bound protease enzyme called MMP14 (MT1-MMP).
In a healthy person, this scissor-like enzyme plays important roles in remodeling tissues – for example, during regeneration or wound healing.
In cancer, however, it operates in the tumor’s microenvironment and gets out of control, cutting through the matrix around the cancer cells and thus helping them invade the surrounding tissue and spread to other organs, leading to deadly metastasis. The researchers found that the ovarian tumors in their study contained abnormally high levels of the MMP14 enzyme.
“We’ve now shown that the immune systems of cancer patients can produce antibodies against tumors,” says Prof. Ziv Shulman of Weizmann’s Immunology Department, who headed the research team together with Prof. Irit Sagi of the institute’s Biological Regulation Department.
“These natural antibodies appear to have an unrealized therapeutic potential,” Sagi says. “More research is needed in order to apply them in future therapies or as diagnosis reagents.”
The research paves the way for a novel approach to developing cancer immunotherapies – one that will make use of natural anti-tumor antibodies. Although the scientists focused on ovarian cancer, they said it could apply to other types of cancer as well.
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