BioCentury
ARTICLE | Distillery Therapeutics

Cancer

January 29, 2019 1:52 PM UTC

Patient sample and mouse studies suggest promoting UCP2 expression could help treat melanoma. In patients, high tumor levels of UCP2 mRNA were associated with survival. In two mouse models of melanoma, tumor-specific overexpression of UCP2 decreased tumor growth and increased the number of tumor-infiltrating CD8+ T cells compared with normal UCP2 expression. In one of the models, tumor-specific overexpression of UCP2 or treatment with Avandia rosiglitazone, which promotes UCP2 expression, plus an anti-PD-1 mAb decreased tumor growth and increased survival compared with the mAb alone. Next steps could include identifying and testing promoters of UCP2 expression in melanoma models...