An international team of researchers has pointed out an antibacterial protein as a possible therapeutic target to act against the root of the cancer pancreas and in the future be able to obtain improvements in its treatment.
The conclusions of the work, which has been led by the Spanish Higher Scientific Research Council (CSIC), have been published in the journal Gut, and in it the researchers have verified how pancreatic cancer stem cells take advantage of a protein antibacterial (called “PGLYRP1″), to avoid the immune system and protect itself from its early elimination.
Immunotherapy, the CSIC recalled in a note released today, represents new hope in the fight against cancer, but not all tumors respond to this treatment.
Pancreatic cancer, which is lethal for 9 out of 10 people diagnosed, does not respond to currently approved drugs, so it is necessary to look for new targets that attack resistant cells, such as cancer stem cells, which are mainly responsible. of starting the tumor, forming metastases and resisting treatments.
The researchers have described in this work how pancreatic cancer stem cells take advantage of this protein to avoid the immune system and protect themselves from its early elimination.
The study has been co-directed by researchers Bruno Sainz, head of the Cancer Stem Cells and Fibroinflammatory Microenvironment group at the Sols-Morreale Biomedical Research Institute (joint center of the CSIC and the Autonomous University of Madrid); Christopher Heeschen, from the Candiolo Cancer Institute (IRCCS), in Italy; and Susana García Silva, from the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), also in Madrid.
Over the last ten years, the three scientists have led a collaborative project in which they identified a population of pancreatic cancer stem cells present in mouse models of this disease. These cells, known as the root of the tumor, are responsible for relapses after treatment with chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
The CSIC has explained that pancreatic cancer is also one of the tumors most resistant to immunotherapy, and that to date the mechanisms by which the stem cells of this type of cancer manage to avoid its elimination by the immune system are not known. .
As a result of this collaboration, scientists identified this protein as one of the causes of immune evasion in stem cells using animal models and patient samples.
In this work, the role of this protein in pancreatic cancer, which is produced in excess in stem cells, has been described for the first time, and its discovery lays the foundations for developing treatments against it.
What has surprised researchers is that a protein that is used by defenses to fight bacteria is used by pancreatic cancer to protect itself from those same defenses.
The research has been funded by the La Caixa Foundation, the Fero Foundation, the Pancreatic Cancer Association, the Spanish Association of Pancreatology, the Spanish Association Against Cancer, the Carlos III Institute and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, as well as such as the gastrointestinal tumor program of the Cancer Network Biomedical Research Center (CIBERONC).
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Source: Gestion
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