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An investigational therapy using modified poliovirus to attack cancer tumors appears to unleash the body’s own capacity to fight malignancies by activating an inflammation process that prevent cancer cells to evade the immune system.
Glioblastoma is a lethal form of brain cancer. The research team elucidated how the poliovirus works not only to attack cancer cells directly, but also activates longer-lasting immune response that appears to inhibit regrowth of the tumor.
Using human melanoma and breast cancer cell lines, and then validating the findings in mouse models, the researchers found that the modified poliovirus therapy starts by attaching to malignant cells, which have an abundance of CD155 protein.
The CD155 protein is a poliovirus receptor. The modified virus then begins to attack the tumor cells, directly killing many, but not all. This releases tumor antigens. The second phase of assault is more complicated, by killing the cancer cells, the modified poliovirus triggers an alarm within the immune system, alerting the body’s defenses to attack.
This appears to occur when the modified poliovirus infects dendritic cells and macrophages. Dendritic cells then present tumor to T cells to launch an immune response. Once the immune system is activated against the poliovirus-infected tumor, the cancer cells can no longer hide and they remain vulnerable to ongoing immune attack.
Poliovirus killed tumor cells and infected the antigen-presenting cells, which allows them to function in such a way that they can raise a T-cell response that can recognize and infiltrate a tumor. Poliovirus stimulates an innate inflammatory response.
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