Thanks to your support, Curestarter researchers in Spain have discovered a potential way to help immunotherapy work better for bowel cancer patients. They have made an incredible breakthrough about how cancer is able to hide from our immune system. Even better, they have found a way to reverse this which could pave the way to new cures.
We’re deeply grateful for your support. Research like ours takes years of effort and teamwork, and it’s only possible thanks to people who believe that science can change lives. Your donations help us uncover how cancer escapes the immune system, and bring us closer to new ways of stopping it. Every contribution truly makes a difference.
Why is immunotherapy important for treating bowel cancer?
Did you know? Bowel cancer is currently the third most common cancer worldwide.
Finding new cures for bowel cancer, or ways to improve current treatments, is vital for helping us reach a day when no life is cut short from this disease.
Immunotherapy is a powerful way to treat cancer by boosting our immune system to attack cancer cells. Sadly though, it doesn’t always work for all patients.
Some bowel cancers are particularly good at hiding from the immune system and dodging current immunotherapy treatments.
What have our researchers discovered?
Dr Batlle and his team were able to discover how bowel cancers become invisible to our immune systems - and it is all down to a molecule called TGF-β.
This molecule is doubly dangerous: firstly, it stops immune cells from entering the cancer and secondly, it instructs another type of immune cell to actually help the cancer grow instead of attacking it.
So the researchers thought that targeting TGF-β could be a great way to stop bowel cancer hiding from the immune system. They tested this idea and amazingly found that when they blocked the action of TGF-β, immune cells were able to enter the tumour and attack cancer cells in a way they couldn’t before. This suggests this approach could help patients respond better to immunotherapy.
What could this discovery mean for bowel cancer patients in the future?
Right now in the UK, almost 44,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year.
Helping immunotherapies to work better would mean that this cancer treatment could cure more of these patients, giving more people more time with their loved ones.
We are hopeful that this research will pave the way to powerful new ways to treat bowel cancer, by targeting the mechanism used by the cancer to hide from the immune system.
Thanks to our Curestarters, this breakthrough gives hope to everyone affected by this devastating disease and one day it could help see more people survive a bowel cancer diagnosis.
Join our united effort to stop cancer.
There are so many different ways to support our search for new cures. Will you join the 90,000+ Curestarters who are already helping us get closer to a day when no life is cut short by cancer?