Jumping genes: doorways to novel immunotherapies

Immunotherapy is largely found effective in tumors with multiple mutations, for instance in the case of skin and lung cancers. Thanks to the DNA mutations, cancer cells produce queer proteins that help target tumor cells through immunotherapies, including such as antibodies, vaccines and genetically engineered CAR-T cell therapies. But for cancers devoid of large number of mutations, immunotherapies fall short of the desired results.??

Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis contend that transposable elements in various cancers could help direct novel immunotherapies to tumors which otherwise defy immune-based treatments. These transposable elements are informally known as jumping genes, which are short sections of DNA incorporated into the human genome at random in an evolutionary fashion.?

The team analysed 33 tumor types from the National Cancer Institute’s The Cancer Genome Atlas Program and identified 1,068 transposable element-derived transcripts with the potential to produce tumor antigens that could someday serve as targets for new immunotherapies.?

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