How midkine helps tumours evade immunotherapy
Source: Health Care-in-europe, April 2025
How midkine helps tumours evade immunotherapy
Cutaneous melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, is characterised by its accumulation of a large number of mutations.
Although some of these alterations should be recognised as a threat by our defences, melanomas often escape immune system surveillance. As a result, more than half of patients do not generally respond to current immunotherapies. Understanding and avoiding this phenomenon is one of the greatest challenges in oncology today.
Now, a study by the Melanoma Group, led by Marisol Soengas, at the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has discovered a mechanism by which melanomas and other aggressive tumours prevent the immune system from recognising and attacking them, as one might expect. The study also helps to understand why when melanoma spreads to other organs, leading to metastases, it often develops resistance to conventional immunotherapy.