Oxygenation treatment could enhance cancer immunotherapy

March 5, 2015

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com @ParkstBrett

Researchers at Northwestern University have announced a cancer-treatment breakthrough based on three decades of work.

According to a report published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the use of added oxygenation suppresses accumulation of adenosine in the tumor microenvironment and weakens immunosuppression. The oxygenation treatment could enhance cancer immunotherapy and reduce tumors by releasing anti-tumor T lymphocytes and normal killer cells.

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This discovery shifts the paradigm of decades-long drug development, a process with a low success rate, said Michail Sitkovsky, a professor of immunophysiology and pharmaceutical biotechnology at Northeastern University. Indeed, it is promising that our method could be implemented relatively quickly by testing in clinical trials the effects of oxygenation in combination with different types of already existing immunotherapies of cancer.

The findings build upon Sitkovskys three decades of study, which has been supported by both Northeastern and the National Institutes of Health.

40-60% oxygen

Around ten years ago, Sitkovsky made an critical cancer-related discovery in immunology, a receptor on the outside of immune cells, called the A2A adenosine receptor, is accountable for stopping T cells from penetrating tumors and for neutralizing killer cells that are able to enter into the tumors.

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Oxygenation treatment could enhance cancer immunotherapy