A drug developed to treat scarring could play a key role in improving the effectiveness of immunotherapy against solid tumours, British researchers reported last night.
This is because many cancer cells develop fibroblasts, which protect them from the immune system, according to the Southampton University researchers.
GKT137831 is currently undergoing clinical trials for organ fibrosis.
Now the researchers have shown that it helps overcome resistance to immunotherapy in studies involving laboratory mice.
The findings were reported in the journal Cancer Research.
Researcher Professor Gareth Thomas said: “Immunotherapy for cancer has been a very exciting development, but still doesn’t work in most patients. Our results suggest that in many cases, treatment resistance is caused by cancer-associated fibroblasts – and we think this can be overcome by targeting NOX4.
"GKT137831 hasn’t yet been tested on cancer patients, but we hope may give immunotherapy drugs a much better chance of fighting cancer cells effectively; this technique could hugely improve the success rate of cancer immunotherapy.”
NOX4 inhibition potentiates immunotherapy by overcoming cancer-associated fibroblast-mediated CD8 T-cell exclusion from tumours. Cancer Research 2 March 2020
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