Stop metastasis
Most cancer patients die from metastatic cancer, not from the primary tumor.
A research team from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, which recently developed a drug that prevents the formation of blood vessels in certain cancers, found that this drug can be used to prevent metastasis.
As it turned out, the new drug not only inhibits the growth of vessels entwining the tumor and preventing the penetration of immune cells into it, but also creates structures similar to lymph nodes in the tumor in order to involve the patient's immune system and significantly increase the ability to reduce cancer growth. The effect of the drug is associated with the action of the cytokine LIGHT, which stimulates the proliferation of T cells and triggers apoptosis of tumor cells, and a vessel-targeted peptide (vascular targeting peptide, VTP), which delivers LIGHT.
Cancer spreads when cancer cells enter the bloodstream, settle and grow in other organs. They are able to settle in remote parts of the body, because the primary tumor secretes substances that make blood vessels in other organs more porous, facilitating the exit of cancer cells from them.
In other words, when cancer cells move in the bloodstream, they usually settle and grow where optimal conditions exist, which were actually created by the primary tumor.
Despite the fact that this behavior of the primary tumor was already known, it is only now that the possibility has been discovered to interfere with this process with the help of a new drug that affects blood vessels.
LIGHT-VTP restores the walls of blood vessels, as a result of which cancer cells cannot land in the intended place and turn into metastases.
Source: article in Cell Reports.
In the future, it will be possible to remove the primary tumor, and then use a new drug to prevent the deposition of cancer cells circulating in the blood in other organs and the growth of metastases.
If cancer cells have already settled elsewhere and started to grow, then the LIGHT-VTP drug can also be used to increase the number of immune cells migrating to a new tumor to destroy it.
Thus, with the new drug, it will be possible not only to treat the primary tumor by strengthening immunotherapy, but also to prevent the spread of metastases, and if the cancer has already spread, it strengthens the immune response of the patient's body to the new tumor.
Article B.He et al. Remodeling of Metastatic Vascular Reduces Lung Colonization and Sensitizes Overt Metastases to Immunotherapy is published in the journal Cell Reports.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on Perkins materials: New drug limits cancer spreading.