News archive 2008

King’s breakthrough in fight against Cancer

09 Jan 2008, PR 07/08

A team at King’s have identified a switch that could boost the body’s own anti-cancer mechanisms and fight tumours.  Scientists believe that the body's immune system recognises abnormal cells and attacks them before they evolve to be cancerous, implying that cancer would be even a more common disease without this mechanism.

The team led by Professor Adrian Hayday and Dr Jessica Strid, working with a team at Yale University led by Dr Mike Girardi, raised the prospect that this natural anti-cancer mechanism can be enhanced. Lead researcher Professor Hayday comments, ‘Increasingly, the scientific data suggest that every day, your incidence of cancer is limited by your immune system, it seems to be patrolling day to day, keeping cancer levels lower.’ The team reports in the journal Nature Immunology that the key lies in a molecule known as Rae-1 which is switched on in the skin of mice soon after exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and agents, and often long before a tumour is formed.

The study shows quite unexpectedly, that this molecule is on its own enough to drive a re-organisation of the immune system that includes the rapid recruitment into the skin of a special subset of T lymphocytes cells not usually found there. When the white cells that recognise Rae-1 were removed, there was increased incidence of solid tumours after exposure to cancer causing chemicals.

Professor Hayday says, ‘The seemingly inescapable conclusion is that as soon as Rae-1 is switched on during cell transformation, the event is visible to the immune system.’ In human beings, the immune system in the gut shares many features in common with mouse skin, including the rapid activation of a molecule, known as MICA, which is arguably the human equivalent of Rae-1.  So perhaps the greatest clinical relevance is to bowel cancers.’

It is thought that the reason the immune system fails, allowing cancer to develop is based on the fact that tumours can seemingly manipulate the manufacture of Rae-1 (and of other related molecules) so that, after a while, they actually begin to use the immune system's own tools to suppress the response. Indeed, Professor Hayday’s study clearly shows that some affected immune cell populations in skin were found to suppress the body’s capacity to reject tumours.  As always, a fine balance needs to be achieved, but by identifying the key molecules involved, approaches to this seem plausible.  Indeed, the study should breed "immense optimism" that the immune system contains within it cells that are indeed ready and able to identify tumours at an early stage of development, says Professor Hayday, and that if there is good "functional follow-through" tumour growth may indeed be stopped in its tracks.

Professor Peter Parker Head of the Division of Cancer at King’s College London comments, ‘The recognition and elimination of cancerous and precancerous cells by the immune system has immense potential for the treatment of this disease. The identification by Adrian and his colleagues of Rae-1 as a cancer associated target for such immuno-recognition provides a strong impetus towards developing this as a line of therapeutic attack in patients.’

Professor Hayday explains, ‘The Rae-1 equivalent molecules in humans, MICA and MICB, clearly deserve investigation by drug companies so that a mimic might be developed to help turbocharge the body's anticancer mechanism, notably to help tumours of the bowel, lung, prostate and breast tumours. If it can be manipulated, it has relevance to the major solid tumours.’

The paper 'Acute upregulation of an NKG2D ligand promotes rapid reorganization of a local immune compartment with pleiotropic effects on carcinogenesis' is available online.



Notes to editors

King's College London
King's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher 2007) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has 19,300 students from more than 130 countries, and 5,000 employees. King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. The College is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings and has an annual income of approximately £400 million. An investment of £500 million has been made in the redevelopment of its estate.

King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, social sciences, the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe and is home to five Medical Research Council Centres – more than any other university.



Further information
Kate Moore
Email: katherine.2.moore@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 4334

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