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CHICAGO, July 6 (Xinhua) – Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Rush University of Chicago have discovered a chemical compound that promotes a vigorous immune attack against the body. pancreatic cancer.
The chemical compound prolongs the survival of several months in the mouse. The results suggested a way to improve immunotherapy for the fatal disease in patients.
The researchers identified a compound, called ADH-503, that interferes with myeloid cell migration. Normally, pancreatic tumors abound with myeloid cells that inhibit the immune response.
When the researchers administered the compound to mice with pancreatic cancer, the number of myeloid cells located in and around the tumors decreased and the remaining myeloid cells were of the type that favored immune responses rather than suppressing them.
This environment results in more carcinogenic T cells in the tumor, significantly slower tumor growth, and longer survival.
Next, researchers investigated whether creating this same environment could make pancreatic tumors responsive to standard immunotherapy. First, they treated mice with an inhibitor called PD-1, a standard immunotherapy used to treat other types of cancer.
Unsurprisingly, they saw no effect. But when the researchers administered immunotherapy to the mice in combination with ADH-503, the tumors decreased and the mice survived much longer.
In some experiments, all tumors disappeared within one month of treatment and all mice survived for four months when the researchers stopped monitoring them. In comparison, all untreated mice died within six weeks.
"Pancreatic cancer is a very deadly disease and we desperately need new therapeutic approaches," said David DeNardo, badociate author and badociate professor of medicine and pathology and immunology at the University of Medicine's Faculty of Medicine. Washington. "In animal studies, this small molecule has led to very marked improvements and has even been curative in some cases.We hope this approach will help patients with pancreatic cancer."
Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States, but only about three per cent of clinical trials involving cancer immunotherapies target pancreatic cancer.
"You can not do individual translation between animal studies and humans, but it's very encouraging," said DeNardo. "Further studies are needed to understand if the compound is safe and effective in people."
The results were published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.
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