Scientists pinpoint a possible reason why melanoma doesn’t respond to cancer drugs

April 12, 2018

A stained microscopic image shows most melanoma cells (green) secreting colony-stimulating factor 1 (red), which promotes immunosuppressive macrophages. N.J. Neubert et al./Science Translational Medicine

cientists have discovered a potential reason why melanoma doesn’t always respond to certain drugs.

For some advanced melanoma patients, immune checkpoint inhibitors — a kind of immunotherapy that pushes the immune system to attack tumors — can lead to long-term remission. But for many patients, the drugs don’t work. Now, scientists at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne studying a mouse model of melanoma have discovered that “bad immune cells” might be limiting how well the drugs work. Their findings were published this week in Science Translational Medicine.

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