2018
November
The good (T cells), the bad (T cells), and the ugly (tumor)
November 28, 2018
A wide variety of factors are known to contribute to the success or failure of cancer immunotherapy. In an effort to identify specific factors, including cell states, Sade-Feldman and Yizhak et al. profiled the transcriptomes of immune cells isolated from 48 tumor samples from 32 patients with melanoma who had been treated with...
A new variety of CAR T cells comes with an on/off switch
November 21, 2018
In order to create CAR T cells capable of a long-term memory response without chronic depletion of B cells, Viaud et al. developed a switchable CAR (sCAR) T cell platform in which the sCAR T cells could be reversibly turned “on” or “off” with a dosage of an antibody-based switch. In the absence...
Stress and metabolism in the cancer-exposed T cell
November 14, 2018
Tumors create a hostile microenvironment that disrupts T cell metabolism and effector function and allows for tumor progression, but the specific pathways between the environmental stressors and the disruption of T cell metabolic function are not fully understood. In a letter recently published in Nature, Song et al. investigated this mechanism in the...
Macrophages swallow tumor cells to protect cancer from immune response
November 7, 2018
In a recent paper published in Cell, Su, Zhao, and Xing et al. explored the effect of antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP) on tumors and unexpectedly discovered that following monoclonal antibody treatment, ADCP in macrophages led to suppression of natural killer (NK) and T cells as well as poor antitumor response in breast cancers...
