Like all of us after a long day, our cells can get tired. Chronic signaling, replication, and activity can exhaust our cellular tissue, including the immune cells needed to combat cancer.
T cells, the immune cells that detect and kill cancer cells, play a critical role in anti-tumor immunity. As a result, these cells remain highly susceptible to exhaustion, which directly limits the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies. While oncologists and cancer researchers have long recognized the link between T cell exhaustion and therapeutic resistance, the precise cellular mechanisms underlying the connection remain poorly understood.
Understanding the signals, pathways, and mechanisms underlying immune function and dysfunction is vital to many cancer research and anti-cancer drug development projects. Better understanding how immune mechanisms work helps identify targetable proteins and genes that can be manipulated to boost immunity.
A report published in the scientific journal Cell presents a comprehensive atlas of T cell exhaustion, providing valuable information on pathways linked to immune dysfunction and resistance to immunotherapy.
The study used a variety of “omics,” a term used to de...