The Importance of Suppressor Cells in Tumor Progression

Pharmaceutical Executive: How important are suppressor cells in tumor progression?
Jay Lalezari: Equally important, or even more important, is the suppressor cells. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was just issued to three individuals for their discovery of regulatory T cells, T regs. And T regs are suppressor cells the immune system is there to distinguish self from non self and and really, one of the miracles of life is how the immune system works and how it mostly gets it right, but it often gets it wrong, and sometimes it attacks self when it shouldn't. Sometimes it overreacts to like a bee sting or a peanut and sometimes it misses things like an HIV virus or a cancer. And so the immune system has various ways of turning up or turning down the immune response, and one of those ways is through these regulatory T cells that so for example, if a patient has rheumatoid arthritis and the immune system is attacking their joints, regulatory T cells are there to try and slow the immune system down and Turn down the inflammation. So that was a major discovery worthy of the Nobel Prize. And what cancer is able to do? Those regulatory T cells also are CCR five positive, and so the solid tumors can secrete rankes, bring those suppressor cells and create a protected tumor, micro environment that is suppressed and cold and sets up a perimeter to keep the immune system from getting in and attacking the cancer. So solid tumors can use CCR five in a number of ways. One is repolarizing macrophages to build blood. Vessels, and the other is by bringing suppressor cells and creating a cold, sort of immune suppressed tumor environment, and that allows the cancer to grow. And then it also uses CCR five to spread tumor cells to other parts of the body.