Washington: Scientists have discovered how skin cancers manage to slip past the human immune system, a finding which they claim could pave the way for developing new treatment against the disease.
An international team, led by Sydney University, has in fact identified a compound produced by certain fatal skin cancer tumours, the latest edition of the Immunology and Cell Biology journal reported.
Lead researcher Dr Scott Byrne said: "The economic and social costs of treating skin cancer are enormous. Some skin cancers will spontaneously regress while others will continue to grow and possibly metastasise (which may be fatal)."
Doctors don't yet understand why some tumours undergo regression and others continue to grow, but Dr Byrne's team has discovered that the immune system is critically involved in the recognition of tumours and their destruction.
"This is why transplant patients on immune suppressive therapy are more prone to getting skin cancers. Specifically, we have shown in this award winning research that skin tumours escaping the immune system do so by secreting a compound called transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta.
"Identifying the tumour-derived compounds responsible for subverting the anti-tumour immune response will enable us to target them therapeutically. This will hopefully lead to novel immune-based therapies designed to make every skin tumour regress, and therefore reduce the ever-increasing incidence of skin cancer.
"It is only through investigating the fundamental mechanisms of anti-tumour immunity that will we be able to design the next generation of cancer therapeutics," Dr Byrne said.