New class of drugs for cancer immunotherapy

Source: eCancer News, March 2018

Johns Hopkins researchers have invented a new class of cancer immunotherapy drugs that are more effective at harnessing the power of the immune system to fight cancer.
This new approach, which was reported in Nature Communications, results in a significant decrease of tumour growth, even against cancers that do not respond to existing immunotherapy.
“The immune system is naturally able to detect and eliminate tumour cells. However, virtually all cancers — including the most common cancers, from lung, breast and colon cancers to melanomas and lymphomas — evolve to counteract and defeat such immune surveillance by co-opting and amplifying natural mechanisms of immune suppression," says Atul Bedi, M.D., M.B.A., an associate professor of otolaryngology — head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and senior author of the study.