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IMAGE: Taha Merghoub and Jedd Wolchok of the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and former postdoc Roberta Zappasodi
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Credit: Ludwig Cancer Research
FEBRUARY 15, 2021, NEW YORK - A Ludwig Cancer Research study has identified a novel mechanism by which a type of cancer immunotherapy known as CTLA-4 blockade can disable suppressive immune cells to aid the destruction of certain tumors. The tumors in question are relatively less reliant on burning sugar through a biochemical process known as glycolysis.
Researchers led by Taha Merghoub and Jedd Wolchok of the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and former postdoc Roberta Zappasodi--now at Weill Cornell Medicine--have discovered that in a mouse model of glycolysis-deficient tumors, CTLA-4 blockade does much more than stimulate cancer-targeting T cells of the immune system. In such tumors, anti-CTLA-4 therapy also destabilizes and reprograms regulatory T cells (Tregs), which suppress anti-cancer immune responses and often dull the effects of immunotherapies. Their report appears in the current issue of