Immune receptor plays dual role in promoting T-cell exhaustion in cancer

A new Northwestern Medicine study has uncovered how a key immunoregulatory receptor plays an unexpected dual role in promoting T-cell exhaustion during chronic infection and cancer, according to findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research sheds light on why targeted cancer therapies have shown limited efficacy in recent clinical trials for a variety of solid tumors, according to Bin Zhang, MD, Ph.D., the Johanna Dobe Professor of Cancer Immunology and senior author of the study. ...