Connective tissue cells support cancer therapy

An interdisciplinary group of researchers at the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen and the University of Zurich is on the trail of an approach to improving immunotherapies. Specifically, the researchers have discovered how immune cells can be efficiently directed to tumor cells, the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen reports in a press release. Connective tissue cells identified by the researchers in the tumor tissue provide an optimal infrastructure for the tumor-fighting cells.

"Certain immune cells, known as T cells, are programmed by immunotherapeutic approaches to find and destroy cancer cells," Burkhard Ludewig from the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen is quoted as saying in the press release. Without the appropriate infrastructure, however, "even with optimal immunotherapy, the immune cells cannot penetrate to the malignant cells and slow down tumor growth or make the cancer disappear completely," explains Lucas Onder from the Medical Research Center at the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen. The three-dimensional network of connective tissue cells identified by the researchers proved to be an optimal infrastructure for the tumor-fighting T cells in the preclinical mouse model.

The research project involved the Medical Research Center, the Department of Thoracic Surgery and the Institute of Pathology at the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen as well as a group of researchers led by Mark Robinson from the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Zurich. The project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European Research Council and Swiss Cancer Research. ce/hs