Breaking Down Barriers

A strong wall keeps invaders out, but a flimsy fence is easier to breach. Such is the case, researchers have found, with two types of colorectal cancer that respond differently to immunotherapy. By mapping the microenvironments in and around tumours with a combination of genetic sequencing and imaging, the team revealed that immune checkpoint blockade therapy works in one type but not the other in part because of the physical barriers they build around themselves. In one type, a poorly organised boundary between tumour (pictured, pink) and stroma (supportive tissue around the tumour, green) allows immune cells in to tackle the tumour, whereas when this barrier is well structured, immune cells are blocked out. This highlights the influence spatial organisation of tumours has on treatment response, and raises the possibility that first targeting the barrier could prime more tumours for treatment and open the gate for more effective immunotherapy.

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 Yu Feng and Wenjuan Ma, and colleagues
• Shanxi Medical University—BGI Collaborative Center for Future Medicine, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan; State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, November 2024