Triple negative breast cancer represents only 15% of cases, but it is one of the fastest growing cancers and affects younger patients.
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The work has used an innovative experimental system of messenger RNA to produce a factor, the LCOR gene, in tumor cells and make them visible and sensitive to the immune system.
Researchers at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona (northeast Spain) have discovered that tumor stem cells are the main cause of resistance to immunotherapy in this subtype of breast cancer because they are invisible to the immune system, and this makes immunotherapy not work.
LCOR FACTOR. This subtype of breast cancer has low levels of the LCOR factor, which plays a key role, hitherto unknown, for cells to present antigens on their surface, molecules that allow the immune system to differentiate normal cells from tumor cells and attack to the latter. Using laboratory mice, the scientists verified how this situation was reversed when the LCOR gene was activated in this type of cell and the machinery to be detected by the immune system was activated. The scientists have also verified how, by combining this approach with immunotherapy, the response rate to the treatment was total and all the tumors were eliminated, curing the mice in the long term, which, according to the doctors, would make it possible to prevent the recurrence of the cancer and the generation of resistance. EFE
