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Chinese scientists find a way to restore body’s cancer-fighting cells

  • Peer-reviewed study provides ‘new strategies’ to enhance immunotherapy treatments based on the immune system’s natural killers
  • The researchers say they have identified why some cells lose their ability to detect and fight off tumours, and how to fix it

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Chinese researchers have identified the crucial role played by the bumps on a Natural Killer cell as it identifies and destroys cancer cells. Photo: Shutterstock
Echo Xie
Researchers in China have a published a study which they say opens up new strategies to boost the body’s first line of defence against cancer and other diseases.
While the immune system’s natural killer (NK) cells can recognise and kill tumours and virus-infected cells at a very early stage, most advanced-stage tumorous cells somehow manage to avoid detection.

The study, led by a team from the University of Science and Technology of China, uncovered a previously unknown mechanism in the tumour’s immune escape which could help the hunt for a way to restore the function of NK cells.

“The study … provides new strategies for enhancing NK cell immunotherapy treatments,” the authors said, in a press release on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website to coincide with its publication.

The researchers used microscopy to image the surface topology of NK cells within and outside tumours and found noticeable differences, according to the study published in March by the peer-reviewed journal Nature Immunology.

NK cells from tumours removed from patients with liver cancer were compared with normal liver and peripheral blood NK cells. The membrane surfaces of the healthy NK cells were covered in bumps, in contrast to the resected tumours which had very few protrusions.

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