Colon cancer is one of the top causes of cancer deaths, especially among young men in the U.S. When colon cancer becomes advanced, it usually spreads to the liver.
Even though surgery has helped many people, the cancer often comes back in the liver.
Now, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered a new treatment approach that may help stop this from happening.
In lab models, the researchers used a new combination of immunotherapies that completely got rid of liver tumors in many cases. This finding could offer a new way to treat advanced colon cancer in the future.
The research team, led by Dr. Ajay V. Maker, used a strategy that trains the body’s immune system to better recognize and destroy cancer cells.
Normally, colon cancer that has spread to the liver is very hard to treat with current immunotherapies. Most of these tumors don’t respond well to treatments that have worked for other cancers.
To get past this problem, the researchers focused on changing the tumor’s environment to make it easier for the immune system to fight back.
They looked at a signaling protein called TNFSF14 or LIGHT. Their earlier research showed that people with higher levels of LIGHT in their tumors had better immune cell activity and lived longer.
In this new study, they tested the effects of LIGHT on mice with colon cancer that had spread to the liver.
They found that LIGHT by itself helped activate immune cells. But when they combined it with a medicine called anti-CTLA-4, the tumors disappeared in many of the mice.
This combination treatment worked by reprogramming the tumor environment and helping immune cells fight more strongly. It also helped the immune system remember how to attack the cancer so that it could prevent the cancer from coming back.
Dr. Maker and his team believe this combination is not only powerful but also realistic to use in patients, since anti-CTLA-4 is already given to people through the bloodstream. They are now working on ways to deliver LIGHT directly into the liver or tumors.
The study shows that carefully targeting the right immune signals can help the body fight cancer more effectively. It gives hope to patients with advanced colon cancer who have few treatment options. The researchers are now looking into how to bring this promising treatment into clinical trials for real patients.
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This research was published in the journal Science Advances.
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