Cancer disease cell, malignant tumor lesions
Credit: 3D illustration/GETTY

An international team of researchers has discovered a new mechanism that will better activate the immune system against cancer.

The mechanism allows immune cells to detect and destroy cancer cells better than before, according to the study published this month in the journal Nature.

The study was led by Prof. Nick Haining, of Harvard Medical School, and co-authored by Prof. Erez Levanon, doctoral student Ilana Buchumansky, of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, and an international team.

In the study, researchers focused on a mechanism that routinely serves the cell by marking human virus-like genes in order to avoid identifying them as viruses. Together with the Harvard team, Levanon has discovered that “when inhibiting this mechanism, the immune system can be harnessed to fight cancer cells in a particularly efficient manner, and most effectively in lung cancer and melanoma.”

“We found that if […]