Garry P. Nolan, Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Endowed Professor at Stanford University, shared a post on X:
“Solid tumors are often considered ‘cold’- meaning there is no inherent inflammation that attracts the ‘good’ immune cells, or such tumors modify their environment to make it inhospitable to our immune cells (that would otherwise eradicate the cancer). We want our tumors ‘hot’ if you please – as that is correlated with positive outcomes for patients.
Natural killer (NK) cells are considered part of the innate immune system… originally thought of as being singularly targeted to certain foreign antigens from pathogens or cells running amok – like cancer cells.
In this paper (Horowitz et al of the Sunwoo lab and many others here at Stanford) we show that NK cells can be re-educated in a manner that allows them to enter tumors, make them ‘hot’ and thereby opening an entirely new avenue for cell therapies (as with CAR-T therapy). Let the race begin.”
Title: CD39+CD49a+CD103+ cytotoxic tissue-resident natural killer cells infiltrate and control solid epithelial tumor growth in mice
Authors: Nina B. Horowitz, Imran A. Mohammad, June Ho Shin, John W. Hickey, Peter Chockley, Gail Snyder, Chen Chen, Keene Lee, Krishna Sharma, Quan Tran, Anahita Nejatfard, Sainiteesh Maddineni, Vasu Divi, Catherine A. Blish, Garry P. Nolan, Jennifer A. Foltz, John B.
Other Articles Featuring Garry P. Nolan On OncoDaily.