An international team of scientists led by Pavla Ticha, a Czech doctor from Charles University and the Královské Vinohrady University Hospital, has discovered one of the principles that allows cancer cells to escape the immune system and form metastases. The results of a study published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications show that the protein NCOR2 plays a key role in this process. The discovery provides new insights into how cancer spreads through the body and opens up new possibilities for the development of targeted anti-cancer treatments.

The study focused on breast cancer, the most common cancer in women. Metastasis is responsible for approximately 90% of deaths related to this disease . However, in order for cancer cells to spread to other organs, they must first escape the body's natural defenses. This is the mechanism that scientists have managed to elucidate.

The main author of the study is Czech physician and scientist  Pavla Tichá , who currently works at the Clinic of Plastic Surgery, 3rd Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and the Faculty Hospital Královské Vinohrady. She conducted the research during her time at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the world's leading centers for tumor biology research. Czech co-author Martin Žídek and other members of the international research team also participated in the study .

“We still do not fully understand how cancer cells manage to evade the immune system and survive despite its defense mechanisms. Our goal was to understand what allows them to do this,”  says Pavla Tichá. The immune system normally recognizes and destroys cells that behave abnormally. However, during their development, cancer cells develop mechanisms that allow them to escape this control. Scientists have now shown that the protein NCOR2 plays a crucial role in this process .  “We found that NCOR2 helps cancer cells hide from the immune system. It then recognizes them more difficultly and cannot intervene effectively against them,”  explains Dr. Tichá.

NCOR2 functions as an epigenetic regulator – it influences which genes are active in a cell without changing the DNA itself. The research team showed that this protein suppresses the production of molecules on the surface of cancer cells that the immune system uses to recognize them as dangerous. This allows cancer cells to survive and metastasize.

The researchers analyzed samples from breast cancer patients and validated the results in advanced laboratory models. They showed that inhibiting the function of the NCOR2 protein restored the anti-tumor immune response and significantly slowed, and in some cases stopped, the growth of metastases.

The study shows that metastasis is determined not only by the ability of cancer cells to grow rapidly, but also by their ability to evade the immune system. A better understanding of these mechanisms is an important step towards developing more effective anti-cancer treatments.

"Our results reveal a mechanism by which tumor cells escape the immune system. This opens new possibilities for the development of targeted therapies that could prevent the formation or further growth of metastases,"  concludes the lead author of the study.

Source: Science and Research