Dr Emma Reeves
University of Southampton
Awarded: £200,000
The challenge
Gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST) affect over 900 people in the UK each year. Most people are treated with surgery and drugs, but this doesn’t work for everyone. Some see their GIST return, and the cancer can become resistant to treatment over time. Researchers are working to better understand how GIST interacts with the immune system with the aim of developing new treatments.
Our immune systems can attack and destroy abnormal cells, but cancer cells often hide to avoid detection. Normally, an abnormal cell signals to the immune system that something is wrong, then ‘killer’ T-cells are sent to destroy it. GIST cells are able to become invisible to ‘killer’ T-cells by hijacking the machinery used to send signals that something is wrong.
How will this project tackle this challenge?
Dr Emma Reeves and her team will investigate how GIST cells hide from the immune system. They will test whether specific drugs could restore the cells’ ability to display warning signals, making them more visible for ‘killer’ T-cells to detect them. They will also explore whether treatments that switch on ‘killer’ T-cells could help the immune system find and destroy cancer cells.
What this means for people affected by sarcoma
By deepening our understanding of how cancer cells evade the immune system, researchers can develop better, more personalised, treatments, giving people more options. The team hope this research could lead to therapies that use the body’s own immune system to fight cancer.
