Targets in Practice

Executing a slick move on the training pitch is one thing, but doing it during a big match is another. And getting treatments working in lab experiments doesn’t mean they’ll be effective in the body. Researchers know that γδ T cells (a type of immune cell, green) have the potential to fight cancer (blue), pinpointing tumour cells that produce stress-induced signals. Triple-negative breast cancer, however, employs a pool of cancer stem cells to evade these immune cells. In lab tests, T cells from healthy donors were able to target these stem cells, but when the researchers repeated the test in mice it was as if they vanished into the crowd, rendering the γδ T cells ineffective. Treating the mice with zoledronate – a drug already used to treat osteoporosis – helped the T cells lock onto the cancer cells, suggesting new combination immunotherapy approaches for the hard-to-treat triple negative breast cancer.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Katrin Raute and colleagues
• Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Cancer Immunology Research, May 2023