Scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have conducted new research that suggests glucocorticoids (GCs), a type of steroid, could indirectly lead to some immunotherapy treatment failures by driving the production of a protein called Cystatin C (CyC).
Their work has been published in the journal Cell Genomics.
Impact of GCs and CyC
GCs are known to be potent suppressors of immunity and are used to treat various conditions where the immune system is overly active, such as asthma and Crohn’s disease.
The CSHL researchers found that patients who were more likely to produce CyC in response to GCs had a worse overall survival rate and were less likely to benefit from immunotherapy treatment.
This suggests that the production of CyC within a tumor may contribute to the failure of cancer immunotherapy.
Mice Experiments Confirm Connection
The researchers confirmed CyC’s connection with cancer by deleting a CyC-producing gene in mice so it was no longer present in cancer cells.
They found that tumors without CyC grew slower. Assistant Professor Hannah Meyer, an expert in quantitative biology at CSHL, praised the effectiveness of using multiple approaches to confirm their findings.
Potential Future Research
Assistant Professor Tobias Janowitz, who led the study, plans to continue investigating CyC in the hope that understanding its function can enhance the success of cancer immunotherapy.
“The research has given me an impetus to find out more about the function of this molecule, specifically in the context of cancer immunotherapy,” he says.
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The study was published in Cell Genomics.
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