New Delhi, Oct 16 (NationPress) Biocon's chief, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, expressed her admiration on Thursday for an innovative antibody optimisation technique created by researchers in the United States, which has the potential to enhance treatment options for individuals struggling with treatment-resistant tumours.

Scientists at the University of California at San Diego have introduced a novel strategy aimed at addressing a critical factor behind treatment resistance and metastasis: a protein known as integrin Alpha-v-beta3.

This pioneering method combats the protein by leveraging the immune landscape present within the tumour itself.

“In a remarkable discovery from the UC San Diego School of Medicine, researchers have formulated an antibody optimisation approach that could significantly improve outcomes for patients facing treatment-resistant tumours,” Mazumdar-Shaw stated in a social media post on platform X.

“This could potentially enhance existing immunotherapies and provide renewed hope for patients,” she added.

While integrin Alpha-v-beta3 is absent in normal tissues, it is found in high concentrations in aggressive tumours.

Earlier efforts to target this protein using antibody therapies aimed to stimulate a unique immune cell type known as natural killer cells. However, these attempts did not yield significant improvements in patient survival during clinical trials, likely due to insufficient natural killer cells within the tumours to produce a robust immune response.

In the groundbreaking study, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, researchers crafted a new anti-Alpha-v-beta3 antibody that activates macrophages, a type of immune cell that is prevalent in advanced Alpha-v-beta3 tumours.

This novel approach successfully triggered strong anti-tumour responses in both patient tumour samples and mouse models.

Moreover, it resulted in increased tumour cell death and reduced tumour growth.

However, the efficacy of the anti-tumour response was entirely reliant on macrophages; when these cells were depleted, the therapy's effectiveness diminished, whereas depleting natural killer cells had no effect, according to the researchers.

“This antibody optimisation strategy could act as a foundational model for addressing other treatment-resistant tumours, potentially enhancing various existing immunotherapies and providing new hope for patients battling advanced cancers,” the researchers from the university's School of Medicine remarked.