摘要：某些患有肿瘤的患者没有死亡，并不是因为他们还处于肿瘤早期，而是因为这个由早期肿瘤演化而来的肿瘤位于更远的部位。怀孕似乎是肿瘤扩散所许可的一种情况，因为孕期乳腺癌呈现出一种早期传播与扩散的趋势。由瑞士洛桑大学Ivan Stamenkovic领导的小鼠实验揭示了该现象可能的原因。
免疫细胞
Stamenkovic and colleagues found that the increased metastasis from tumors of several different types that they observed in pregnant mice was a result of decreased activity of immune cells known as NK cells. Furthermore, at least part of the inhibitory effect on NK cells was mediated by another group of immune cells, myeloid-derived suppressor cells. Consistent with this, the gene expression profile of the lungs of pregnant mice (a site to which many of the tumors metastasized) was reflective of myeloid-derived suppressor cell accumulation. Of clinical interest, the majority of genes downregulated in the lungs of pregnant mice were also expressed at lower levels in samples from lung cancer patients with poor prognosis than in samples from patients with better prognosis. The authors therefore suggest that myeloid-derived suppressor cells may represent a shared mechanism of immune suppression during pregnancy and tumor growth.
TITLE: Myeloid-derived suppressor cells are implicated in regulating permissiveness for tumor metastasis during mouse gestation
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Ivan Stamenkovic
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Phone: 41.21.314.7136; Fax: 41.21.314.7110; E-mail: Ivan.Stamenkovic@chuv.ch.
View this article at: https://www.jci.org/articles/view/41936?key=bfc78b4e21ad3bc01f34
