To grow, a tumor must achieve the impossible: convince our immune system NOT to destroy it.

How does it do it? With an ancient and ingenious theft.

It browses an archive hidden in our own DNA. It reactivates the same genetic programs that allowed us, as embryos, to build the placenta, invade the uterus, create new blood vessels and temporarily switch off the mother’s immune defenses.

What in the embryo is a project for life, in the tumor becomes a project for survival.

From an immunological point of view, the embryo is a semi-transplant. Half of its DNA is paternal, therefore foreign to the mother. Yet it is not rejected. The placenta and trophoblast create a bubble of tolerance around it that reprograms maternal defenses.

Cancer does exactly the same.

Cancer cells learn to express molecules like PD-L1 and HLA-E. They are powerful STOP signals for T lymphocytes and Natural Killer cells. In practice, they tell the immune system: “I am not a danger”. They create a local immune paralysis.

This insight led to the study by Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

Researchers engineered a new generation of genetically enhanced Natural Killer cells to break this deception.

NK cells are our first line of defense against viruses and tumors, but they are switched off inside the tumor microenvironment. The new multifunctional platform makes them resistant with 3 combined strategies.

We are still in the preclinical phase, further studies are needed before clinical use, but the message is powerful: to defeat cancer, it is not enough to boost our defenses. We must prevent it from reactivating those ancestral programs born to protect new life and that it has turned into a weapon for its own survival.

Source: Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital – Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy