Targeting stress proteins on cells to help treat cancer

Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute identified a mAb that binds to a domain on stress proteins expressed by cancer cells, thereby impeding the cancer from sloughing off the protein to escape natural killer cells. The findings, published in Science, suggest a strategy that could help treat cancer by aiding NK cell's antitumor efforts.

Many cancers express the stress proteins MHC class I polypeptide-related sequence A (MICA) and MICB due to genomic damage, and the proteins trigger a process that culminates in natural killer (NK) cell-mediated tumor cell death. As cancer progresses, tumor cells proteolytically break off the MICA and MICB proteins bound to their surface, circumventing the immune system's defenses. Previous studies have identified a correlation between disease progression and high serum concentrations of discarded MICA for several tumor types, including melanoma, neuroblastoma, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia...