substances made by the body vitamin A It may make your immune system less effective at fighting cancer, a new study has found.
Vitamin A itself is an essential nutrient, but one of its byproducts can inadvertently “turn off” some of the immune response to cancer, according to a new study published in Nature Immunology.
Research suggests that blocking the effects of this byproduct may restore immune activity and improve cancer immunotherapy.
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Researchers at the Princeton University Branch of the Ludwig Cancer Institute made this discovery By growing dendritic cells, important immune cells that activate the body’s defenses, in the lab.
As these cells developed, scientists noticed that they naturally turned on an enzyme that produced retinoic acid, a molecule derived from vitamin A.
Retinoic acid may reduce the ability of dendritic cells to stimulate an immune response. This reduces the effectiveness of dendritic cell vaccines, an immunotherapy that trains the immune system. attack canceraccording to research.
The researchers also found that when dendritic cells produced large amounts of retinoic acid, they were less able to send strong danger signals to the immune system.
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When retinoic acid was removed, the dendritic cells became stronger and better able to activate T cells, the immune system’s cancer-killing cells.
A second study published in iScience by collaborators from the same research group looked at ways to develop drugs that block this process.
use computer modeling The research team conducted an extensive drug screen to design and identify small molecules that block the enzyme that produces retinoic acid.
This led to the creation of a promising inhibitor that stops the production of retinoic acid in a controlled manner, the researchers noted, developing the same tools used in the experiments in the original study.
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“Taken together, our findings reveal that retinoic acid has a wide range of effects on the attenuation of crucial substances. Immune response to cancer” said lead researcher Yibin Kang in a press release.
“While investigating this phenomenon, we also solved a long-standing challenge in pharmacology by developing safe and selective drugs. Retinoic acid inhibitor We established preclinical proof of concept for signal transduction and use in cancer immunotherapy. ”
These findings are based on laboratory and animal models and may not fully reflect the function of retinoic acid in humans.
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The study also looked at a specific vitamin A-derived molecule (retinoic acid) that acts on immune cells, rather than dietary vitamin A intake or overall vitamin A status.
According to the National Institutes of Health, vitamin A remains an essential nutrient for normal immune function, growth, and vision, and extensive human research has found no evidence that vitamin A causes cancer.
