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WASHINGTON - Pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal of all cancers, is capable of evading attacks by immune cells by changing its microenvironment so that the immune cells suppress, rather than support, an attack on the tumor. The scientists also found that that some of the mediators of this suppressive response, including a protein called STAT1, represent potential therapeutic targets that could be used to reverse this evasion and point to possible treatment opportunities.
The finding appears January 28, 2021, in
Cancer Immunology Research. This is the first demonstration that an immune attack induces pancreatic cancer-derived immune suppression, offering a new approach to immunotherapy for this deadly cancer, noted Louis M. Weiner, M.D., director of Georgetown Lombardi and the Principal Investigator of this study.