After they invade tumours, immune cells gradually lose their ability to produce energy.

Greg Delgoffe and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania studied immune cells called T cells in mice with implanted tumours. They found that T cells inside tumours were less effective at taking up glucose than those in other parts of the body. The tumour-infiltrating cells also showed reduced total mass of mitochondria — cell organelles that produce energy — and contained abnormally shaped mitochondria. The metabolic defects were linked to reduced levels of PGC1α, a protein that regulates mitochondrial replication during cell division. When the researchers used a virus to boost PGC1α expression in T cells and gave the cells to tumour-bearing mice, the tumours shrank more and the animals lived longer than those that received non-reprogrammed cells.

Boosting metabolic processes in immune cells could help to improve cancer therapies, the authors say.

Immunity http://doi.org/bndn (2016)