Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered a new form of immunotherapy that could prevent resistance to hormone therapy in prostate cancer.
The study, funded by Prostate Cancer UK’s Research Innovation Awards programme and published in the Journal for Immunotherapy Cancer, could help men living with the condition live longer before their cancer becomes resistant to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a first-line treatment for prostate cancer.
Recognised as the second most common cancer in the UK, prostate cancer affects more than 52,000 men every year.
Despite being effective in limiting the growth and spread of cancer, ADT can sometimes become resistant to tumours, accelerating the spread of cancer throughout the body.
“Once [the onset of resistance to hormone therapy] happens, [prostate cancer] is difficult to treat and harsher treatments like chemotherapy have to be used,” explained professor Claire Lewis, School of Medicine and Population Health, University of Sheffield.
Using cutting-edge techniques, researchers studied how immune cells function within prostate tumours following ADT and found that a type of white blood cell called a macrophage accumulates in large amounts around blood vessels in prostate tumours during ADT.
The team then developed a way of using novel nanoparticles, which play a role in multiple steps of activation of the immune system to suppress cancer and induce tumour cell death, to selectively deliver a drug to these cells to make the macrophages express a potent immunostimulant called interferon-beta.
When interferon-beta, a disease-modifying therapy commonly used for relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) and secondary progressive MS, is released inside tumours, it stimulates other immune cells known as T cells to eliminate cancer cells and delay treatment resistance.
Lewis added: “We’re excited by the potential of this new form of immunotherapy to enhance the response of prostate tumours to hormone treatment. We are now working with our clinical colleagues to explore ways to take this forward into clinical trials as soon as possible.”
The findings come after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended Accord’s ADT, Orgovyx (relugolix), as the first oral treatment of its kind to be approved by the agency for use in advanced prostate cancer patients with hormone-sensitive cases of the disease.