Cancer: in Toulouse, the super power of the colon to fight against metastases
A researcher from the Oncopole in Toulouse has just been awarded for her work on the resistance of colorectal cancer to immunotherapy treatments. Its approach is new: thanks to its natural immunity, the colon is able to fight tumor metastases on its own.
What if a tumor had the power to regress its own metastases? This is the daring bet launched by researchers from the Cancer Research Center of Toulouse (CRCT) and the University Cancer Institute of Toulouse-Oncopole (IUCT-Oncopole). Dr. Christel Devaud’s project (1) is one of eight awarded by the Amgen France Fund for Science and Humans.
A common cancer in both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second most deadly (more than 17,000 deaths per year in France). It is also a cancer that resists immunotherapy treatments and whose metastases, which settle in the liver in 80% of cases, are particularly difficult to treat. Based on this double observation, Christel Devaud, cancer immunologist researcher, worked alongside Virginie Feliu, research engineer, on mouse models with the aim of better understanding the interactions between the tumor and the specific immunity of the organ. “Each organ develops its own immunity and the colon naturally develops immunity capable of fighting tumors. We found that the primary colon tumor sent immune signals to its own liver metastases. CD8 T lymphocytes, naturally present in the colon, are activated locally to fight against the tumor but also come out of their environment to drive out cancer cells located elsewhere. It’s a bit as if the colon had the ability to send its soldiers elsewhere in the body and we are the first to have seen this,” enthuses the researcher.
A further step in the personalization of treatments
The colon would therefore be endowed with a super power, an anti-metastasis effect. To go further, the Toulouse team got involved in mapping the immune cells present in the tumor with the idea of evaluating the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments in the destruction of metastases. To validate this pre-clinical phase, the study is currently being extended by the analysis of blood and tumor samples from around thirty patients from the IUCT-Oncopole. The results are promising according to Christel Devaud. “This research work is possible thanks to the generosity of patients and their trust. We hope that our discoveries will lead to a better understanding of the sensitivity of colorectal tumors to treatments”, emphasizes Dr. Carlos Gomez-Roca, oncologist at the IUCT-Oncopole and collaborator of the project.
This discovery could have several shipments. In addition to characterizing the potential of the colon to transmit an immune response against tumours, it could make it possible to identify biomarkers in metastases and to anticipate whether or not they are sensitive to immunotherapy treatments. “Achieving the development of resistance to metastasis represents great hope for research and a further step in the personalization of treatments”, discovered Christel Devaud.