Newly Identified Immune Cell Can Be Linked to Human Cancer Prognosis

Scientists from University Of California San Francisco have discovered a new type of immune cell which could have direct links with human cancer prognosis. This study was published in Cancer Cell.

It is well understood that antigen-presenting cells(APCs) within tumors typically do not maintain cytotoxic T cell(CTL) function, despite engaging them. Current cancer immunotherapies are based on enhancing the ability of host or introduced T cells to reject tumors. However efficient CTL function requires frequent repriming and abundant tumor macrophages, which capture CTL at the tumor margin, either fail to achieve this, and/or actively inhibit T cell response

In this study, researchers show that the abundant macrophages in tumors have a functional opposite, in the form of antigen-presenting CD103+DCs. These cells efficiently cross-present tumor antigens and are differentially distributed within the tumor microenvironment compared with tolerizing APCs. They also describe how intratumoral CD103+DCs are uniquely targetable, how their abundance is required for T cell therapy in mice, and how their transcript prevalence predicts outcome in human cancers.

This cell type discovered in this study presents opportunities for prognostic and therapeutic approaches across multiple cancer types.

A study, published in Nature Medicine, reports that at least 2% of people over age 40 and 5% of people over 70 have mutations linked to leukemia and lymphoma in their blood cells.

As known to us, mutations in the body's cells randomly accumulate as part of the aging process, and most are harmless. For some people, genetic changes in blood cells can develop in genes that play roles in initiating leukemia and lymphoma even though such people don't have the blood cancers.

The researchers found that mutations in the blood would be associated with changes in stem cells that develop into blood cell, via zeroing in on such genetic mutations that were present in the blood but not in tumor samples from the same patients.

Many older people have mutations linked to leukemia. In 341 patients ages 40-49, fewer than 1% had mutations in 19 leukemia- or lymphoma-related genes. But among 475 people ages 70-79, over 5% did. And over 6% of the 132 people ages 80-89 had mutations in these genes.

The current study likely underestimates the percentage of people with mutations in leukemia and lymphoma genes because the researchers only were able to identify small mutations, not large structural variations or the insertions and deletions of chunks of genetic material.

Still, it would be premature for people to undergo genetic testing to see if they have mutations linked to leukemia and lymphoma as a means to predict their risk of blood cancers.

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