3rd July 2020

Ed Roberts was co-first author on a paper with colleagues from UCSF in Cancer Cell (Visualizing synaptic transfer of tumor antigens among dendritic cells), which describes how dendritic cells (DCs) transport tumour antigens to the lymph node within vesicles, which they then transfer to other resident DCs. Only DCs containing these vesicles can then activate T cells, which go on to infiltrate the tumour. Understanding these early steps in the development of anti-tumour immunity could ultimately lead to better treatments for cancer.

Emily Kay, Sara Zanivan and co-authors made a preprint available on bioRxiv (Metabolic control of tumour extracellular matrix production in cancer-associated fibroblasts), which finds that extracellular matrix production by cancer-associated fibroblasts - which is pro-tumorigenic - is under strict metabolic control, in particular as a result of increased proline synthesis.

Daniel Murphy and colleagues also had a preprint in bioRxiv (Asbestos accelerates disease onset in a genetic model of malignant pleural mesothelioma), which shows that asbestos-driven inflammation contributes to mesothelioma in a genetically modified mouse model. This model system could assist in finding better ways to tackle this challenging lung cancer, which has its highest incidence in Glasgow.

Matthias Pietzke, Alexei Vazquez and colleagues at the Beatson and in Cambridge investigated amino acid dependent formaldehyde metabolism in mammalian cells in a paper in Communications Chemistry.