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Co-author Dr Joanna Turley said she has ‘significant hope’ that C100 can be developed into a ‘highly effective’ booster for cancer immune therapies in the future.
Scientists at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) have discovered that a vaccine booster shot can offer immunity to tumours caused by cancer.
The vaccine booster known as C100 is derived from chitin – one of the most common building materials in nature, and a key component of exoskeletons belonging to invertebrates such as crustaceans and insects.
In a study published in Cell Reports Medicine yesterday (9 May), the team of scientists describe how C100 is “highly effective” at stimulating a key sensing and signalling molecule which regulates anti-tumour immune responses.
“In-situ vaccines are a form of cancer immunotherapy which aim to transition the tumour itself into a vaccine. For this to work well, you need to use an adjuvant, or vaccine ‘booster’, to kickstart anti-tumour immunity,” said senior author Prof Ed Lavelle of the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute.
“As you’d expect, there are numerous hurdles to clear even when you have isolated a potential target. One such target is a sensing and signalling molecule known as ‘Sting’, but until now adjuvants targeting it have failed to clear some key hurdles in the cellular environment.”
The study delves into the mechanism with which C100 acts on the tumour and the team is hopeful that some of these hurdles can be crossed to get the immune response scientists are hoping for.
Thanks to the study, the team now knows how C100 exclusively activates one arm of a specific signalling pathway without causing inflammatory responses that could interfere with anti-tumour immunity and which may otherwise prevent therapies achieving clinical success.
The team also discovered that injecting C100 led to therapeutic effects with what it calls a “checkpoint blocker” to release the brakes on the immune response.
“This highlights the potential that C100 has for combination approaches with other cancer immunotherapies, which could help to improve response rates,” said Dr Joanna Turley, co-first author of the study, which was supported by Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council.
“Our work offers detailed new insights into how C100 works, which is critical as you need a functional blueprint to be able to design a therapeutic battle plan, and we now have significant hope that C100 can be developed into a highly effective adjuvant for use in cancer immune therapies in the future.”
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