Immunotherapy "breakthrough"

Fallleaves

Tuning macrophages a 'breakthrough' in cancer immunotherapy

"Cancers use these M2 macrophages to promote their own growth. However, researchers can now successfully flip M2 macrophages into their wound-sterilizing cousins, called "M1" or "kill-type" macrophages, which, contrary to promoting the growth of new tissue, may aid the immune system in clearing the body of cancer.

In fact, there are two schools of thought describing how, exactly, to change a population of M2 macrophages into a population of M1 macrophages. In the first school of thought, M2 macrophages can reverse their differentiation to become briefly more "stem-like" before being encouraged to use their second chance to pick the more beneficial M1/kill-type phenotype. In the second school of thought, as macrophages naturally die out, they could be replaced by a new population dominated by M1 macrophages.

The paper describes a way to accomplish the second: In the presence of the cytokine interferon gamma, macrophages take on the M1 phenotype.

"Interferon gamma has been explored as a possible therapeutic agent, but there are problems with it," Lenz says. "Interferon gamma mediates hundreds of effects and some of them aren't very comfortable."

Instead, one idea is to improve the sensitivity of cells to the interferon gamma that already exists in the body."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/16020...

Interestingly, this can also be accomplished with yeast-derived Beta-glucans (like Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the supplement I'm taking).

Dectin-1 Activation by a Natural Product β-Glucan Converts Immunosuppressive Macrophages into an M1-like Phenotype.

"In this study, we demonstrate that particulate yeast-derived β-glucan, a natural polysaccharide compound, converts polarized alternatively activated macrophages or immunosuppressive TAM into a classically activated phenotype with potent immunostimulating activity."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26453753