Researchers from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and collaborators report that they have found evidence that targeting CD47, a protein that is part of the innate immune system, could be a key step in fighting colorectal cancer. Their findings represent one of the first indications that targeting part of the innate immune system, combined with traditional immunotherapy drugs which work on the adaptive immune system, could be more effective in fighting colorectal cancer, according to the scientists, who published their work, “ ” in the . Until recently, immunotherapies only targeted the body’s learned immune response once cancer cells had already slipped by the body’s first line of defense against disease—the innate immune system—explain the researchers.
“Up until now, immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the adaptive immune system have been the mainstream in immunotherapy,” said first author Hiroyuki Arai, MD, PhD, a former postdoctoral researcher at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “But in our current study, we focused on CD47, a checkpoint molecule in the innate immune system.” The researchers knew colorectal cancer cells use the immune checkpoint CD47 to dodge macrophages (the innate immune cells that would otherwise target and destroy them).
But how exactly do cancer cells manipulate CD47, and what could this mean when it comes to treating colon cancer? In the present study, funded in p.