Scientists in the Faculty of Medicine, including those based in the Centre for Cancer Immunology, have discovered added benefits from using a drug called Selinexor to treat cancer.
Selinexor has recently been approved to treat patients with blood cancer and works by blocking proteins involved in cancer-cell growth.
In a new study, published in Frontiers in Oncology, the Southampton team showed that the drug also boosts natural killer (NK) cells and allows them to kill cancer cells much more effectively.
NK cells are able to directly kill cancer in the body and stimulate other cells in the immune system to help attack cancer.
The research was led by Dr Matthew Blunt in Clinical and Experimental Sciences. He said: “NK cell-based therapeutics are an important emerging area of immunotherapy however NK cell dysfunction is a frequent occurrence in cancer. Strategies to overcome this are crucial for improving the treatment of patients and therefore to identify that selinexor stimulates an NK cell anti-cancer response provides us with an excellent opportunity to achieve this.”
The team is now working with Karyopharm Therapeutics to determine how selinexor can be combined most effectively with NK cell targeted therapies to improve outcomes for patients with cancer.
In addition, they are investigating whether NK cells can be used as markers to identify patients most likely to respond well to selinexor treatment.