Researchers Identify a 'Switch' That Might Someday Kill Tumor Cells

Cells have a protein receptor that will cause that cell to die - in theory. Unfortunately, "Previous efforts to target this receptor have been unsuccessful," says Jogender Tushir-Singh, an associate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, Davis. But he's now led a team of researchers at the university's Comprehensive Cancer Center that's identified a receptor-activating protein section. And more importantly, "now that we've identified this epitope, there could be a therapeutic path forward" for targeting that receptor... in tumors.The findings were published Oct. 14 in the Nature journal Cell Death & Differentiation... Death receptors do precisely what their name implies - when targeted, they trigger programmed cell death of tumor cells. They offer a potential workaround that could simultaneously kill tumor cells and pave the way for more effective immunotherapies and CAR T-cell therapy... Tushir-Singh and his colleagues knew they might be able to target cancer cells selectively if they found the right epitope. Having identified this specific epitope, he and other researchers can now design a new class of antibodies to selectively bind to and activate Fas to potentially destroy tumor cells specifically. Singh says their research "sets the stage" to develop antibodies that selectively kill tumor cells.

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