The fungal compound beta-glucan can be used to train the innate immune system that targets cancer cells, the study says.

cancer cell.Image courtesy of National Cancer Center / Wikimedia Commons

Immunotherapy is one of many treatments for cancer. This therapy involves the administration of laboratory-made substances that can stimulate the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells or improve immune system function to fight cancer cells.

Experts believe that immunotherapy affects the adaptive immune system, the immunity acquired after exposure to an antigen / threat.

Currently, a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that the innate immune system may also play a role in the success of immunotherapy, allowing specific cells of the immune system to be primed to target tumor cells. I will.

Their findings are published in peer-reviewed journals cell..

Interaction between cancer cells and the immune system

Our immune system has a complex response to tumors. Immune system cells invade solid tumors and play an important role in tumor progression. The tumor cell microenvironment reprograms the immune cells that infiltrate the tumor cells, so the latter begins to promote tumor growth. Cancer also causes changes in the production of specific immune system cells, including neutrophils and monocytes, which acquire specific structures that promote tumors.

However, certain neutrophils that invade the tumor are also cytotoxic and fight the tumor. Tumors that support and destroy neutrophils have different phenotypes (structures) and can be distinguished by different cytokine and chemokine production patterns.

Together, all these changes in the immune system play an important role in the progression of cancer.

Previous evidence

The latest research shows that the fungal compound beta-glucan can stimulate the immune system to make more specific cells (such as neutrophils), and this treatment will bring better results from chemotherapy in mice. It is based on previous evidence that researchers have discovered that they can. We also found that after beta-glucan therapy, the innate immune system produces a type of memory that is retained in the bone marrow. Researchers have called this behavior “trained immunity.”

Latest research

In the latest study, researchers first inject beta-glucan or a control solution into the abdominal cavity of mice (the peritoneum is a thin layer that covers the abdominal organs), and then melanoma cells (a type of cancer cell) one week later. I injected it. They noted that beta-glucan-treated mice had less tumor progression even two weeks after injection of tumor cells than control mice.

The mice in the test group had trained immunity, which was not due to the adaptive immune system. However, there was no difference in the number of tumor-infiltrating cells between the test and control mice. Instead, there were neutrophils in the test group that destroyed more tumors.

To confirm the findings, researchers removed neutrophils from beta-glucan-treated mice and injected them into a new set of mice with melanoma cells. Tumor growth was also suppressed in new mice. For another level of confirmation, the research team took another set of mice, destroyed their bone marrow, and then transplanted the bone marrow of beta-glucan-treated mice into them. A control group was prepared. They received bone marrow from the control group in the first experiment after their own bone marrow was destroyed.

Both groups were injected with melanoma cells. Mice that received bone marrow from mice treated with beta-glucan performed better. This study showed that this reaction was due to the memory of the immune system stored in the bone marrow.

Further investigation revealed that genetic alterations occurred in beta-glucan-treated mice, producing more antitumor neutrophils.

This is a breakthrough concept that can be therapeutically used in human cancer immunotherapy, “said Dr. George Hajishengalis, co-author of the study. news release According to the University of Pennsylvania.

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