The protein factories of our cells are much more diverse than we thought they were. Scientists from the Netherlands Cancer Institute have now shown that cancer cells can use these so-called ribosomes to boost their invisibility cloak, helping them hide from the immune system. The team publishes their findings in Cell today.
"These findings make us change how we think about ribosomes." Our immune system is constantly monitoring our body. In order to survive, cancer cells need to evade this inspection.
"Making cells more visible to the immune system has revolutionized treatment", says researcher Liam Faller from the Netherlands Cancer Institute. "However, many patients don't respond to these immunotherapies or become resistant." How cancer cells manage to circumvent elimination by the immune system is still a million dollar question though.
Turns out cancer cells might use our very own protein factories to hide. Each of our cells contain a million of these minuscule factories, called ribosomes. Liam: "They make all the protein we need.
This job is so essential: all life depends on it! This is why people have always thought that every ribosome is the same, and that they just passively churn out protein as dictated by the cell's nucleus. We've now shown that this is not necessarily the case." Cells change their ribosomes when they receive a danger signal from the immune system, the new study showed.
Liam: "They change the balance towards a type of ribosome that has a flexible arm.