Scottish scientists hope their award winning research will bring new bowel cancer treatments after discovering how the deadly disease takes over the body.
For years, experts have not been able to figure out why the fourth most common cancer in the UK makes the body's defence cells ignore the disease. These "security guard" cells usually ward off harmful bacteria, but are unable to see the cancer's cells as a threat.
Researchers at the the University of Glasgow and Cancer Research UK’s Beatson Institute have now discovered bowel cancer's ability to blind the immune system, making it unable to destroy the invasive cancer cells.
Scientists have said the discovery opens the door to potentially reversing or preventing this process. It would allow the immune system to see the bowel cancer cells and stop them from growing and multiplying.
Dr Seth Coffelt, who led the research, said: "Normally, immune cells keep things as they should be, patrolling the bowel like security guards, tackling any harmful bacteria and keeping the gut healthy.
"However, when cells in the bowel become cancerous, they fire these ‘security guards’ and all the methods these immune cells use to talk to each other to co-ordinate an immune response no longer get produced."
He continued: "Cancer doesn’t want immune cells recognising them as a threat, so they manipulate the immune cells so they can’t see the threat and simply pass on by leaving the cancer to do its damage."
Around 4,000 people in Scotland are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year.
Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK, with about 16,800 deaths in the country every year – or 46 every day. As part of the work, the Glasgow-based researchers focused on a particular type of immune cell called gamma delta T cells.
Bowel cancer begins in the epithelial cells which line the bowel and these T cells patrol this area attacking any threats, such as damaged cells or small tumours, before they cause harm.
Scientists already knew that when bowel cancer is present, immune cells that can kill cancer do not often act against the bowel cancer, but they did not know why.
Using tissue samples from bowel cancer tumours donated by patients in Scotland, and other countries, scientists were able to identify the specific mechanism the cancer cells use to rewire the gamma delta T cells on a molecular level.
The team which made the discovery is now hopeful further research could offer treatments which could reverse that process. Discovering how the cancer calls trick the immune system offers potential for new treatments which could reactivate these immune cells, researchers said.
Dr Coffelt said: “Our discovery means that if a way can be found to artificially engage the ‘blinded’ T cells with a drug so that the T cells can see the cancer again, we could find a new effective way to treat bowel cancer.”
The research, which was published in Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, won funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
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