A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU), led by Carmit Levy and Yaron Carmi, have discovered a cancer mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking tumors.
From this discovery, they realized that it is possible to reverse this mechanism, stimulating the immune system to fight cancer cells, even in types of cancer considered resistant to the predominant forms of immunotherapy.
Levy, one of the study’s directors, said it all happened by chance: “My lab studies both cancer and the effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun on our skin and body, two substances that are known to suppress the immune system. (…) While in most cases cancer researchers around the world focus on the tumor and look for mechanisms by which cancer inhibits the immune system, here we proposed a different approach: to investigate how exposure to UV radiation inhibits the immune system and to apply our findings to cancer. The discovery of a mechanism that inhibits the immune system opens new avenues for innovative therapies.”
The discovery has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications and represents a crucial advance in cancer research, which could lead to the development of new clinical therapies for patients with resistant tumors.