Can lymph nodes boost the success of cancer immunotherapy?
Source: medicalxpress.com Author: from University of California, San Francisco Cancer treatment routinely involves taking out lymph nodes near the tumor in case they contain metastatic cancer cells. But new findings from a clinical trial by researchers at UC San Francisco and Gladstone Institutes shows that immunotherapy can activate tumor-fighting T cells in nearby lymph nodes. The study, published in Cell, suggests that leaving lymph nodes intact until after immunotherapy could boost efficacy against solid tumors, only a small fraction of which currently respond to these newer types of treatments. Most immunotherapies are aimed only at reinvigorating T cells in the tumor, where they often become exhausted battling the tumor's cancer cells. But the new research shows that allowing the treatment to activate the immune response of the lymph nodes as well can play an important role in driving positive response to immunotherapy. "This work really changes our thinking about the importance of keeping lymph nodes in the body during treatment," said Matt Spitzer, Ph.D., an investigator for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology and senior author of the study. Lymph nodes are often removed because they are typically the first place metastatic cancer cells appear, and without surgery, it can be difficult to determine whether the nodes contain metastases. "Immunotherapy is designed to jump start the immune response, but when we take out nearby lymph nodes before treatment, we're essentially removing the key locations where T cells live and can be activated," Spitzer said, [...]