A new study from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center has found evidence that targeting CD47, a protein that is part of the innate immune system, could be a key step in fighting colorectal cancer. It is 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. The findings were just published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer .
Traditional immunotherapies, known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, have transformed cancer care by helping the body's immune system fight cancer like it does other diseases. They do this by blocking immune checkpoints – proteins that act like brakes for the immune system to keep it from attacking healthy cells. Cancer cells exploit these proteins to evade detection by immune cells, but immune checkpoint inhibitors prevent that.
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, known as the innate immune system. Up until now, immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the adaptive immune system have been the mainstream in immunotherapy. But in our current study, we focused on CD47, a checkpoint molecule in the innate immune system.
" Hiroyuki Arai, MD, PhD, first author, former postdoctoral researcher at the cancer center, part of the Keck School of Medicine o.