City scientists in cancer breakthrough

Local scientists have found a new way to break the defense mechanism of malignant tumor cells, providing a possible new way to fight cancer.

Xu Chenqi and his research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology have found a new way that T cells interact with tumors, according to a report published in the journal Nature yesterday.

T cells, a type of white blood cell, can recognize and decompose tumor cells. Tumor cells, however, fight back. They are able to interact with a protein (PD-1) on the surface of the T cells and suppress the cells’ function.

The team found an enzyme (FBXO38) helps maintain the integrity of the T cell. The enzyme it is not very active in the tumor microenvironment, and its performance needs to be boosted. Cancer drug IL-2 can do exactly that, reinvigorating T cells, the research showed.

IL-2 was approved by Food and Drug Administration in US in 1995 as a treatment for skin and kidney cancers, but it is not widely used because of some extreme side effects.

Researchers will now explore other ways to use IL-2 in combination with other drugs.

“There needs more research of the fundamental questions of PD-1 biology,” Xu said.

Xu’s team started to study T cells when he joined the CAS from Harvard Medical School in 2009. In 2016, results of their research into the function of T cells were also published in Nature.