Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Cancer therapy

Tumours switch to resist

Nature volume 490, pages 347–348 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

Tumour cells can respond to targeted immune-cell therapies by losing proteins that mark them as being cancerous. Subverting this resistance mechanism may lead to more durable cancer-treatment strategies. See Letter p.412

Decades of research have yielded methods for cancer treatment that can be more specifically tailored to a patient's cancer than broader strategies such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy. However, these methods — which include immunotherapy and therapies targeted at cancer-causing genes — are dogged by the problem of acquired resistance, in which many patients initially respond to the treatment but subsequently become unresponsive and experience relapse. Resistance is commonly thought to arise from the proliferation of a small proportion of resistant cells in a mixed tumour-cell population. But on page 412 of this issue, Landsberg et al.1 show, using a mouse model of melanoma, that resistance to a promising form of immunotherapy can develop when cancer cells change their protein-expression profile in response to treatmentFootnote 1.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Escape by dedifferentiation.

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1 were published online on 10 October 2012.

References

  1. Landsberg, J. et al. Nature 490, 412–416 (2012).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Restifo, N. P., Dudley, M. E. & Rosenberg, S. A. Nature Rev. Immunol. 12, 269–281 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Rosenberg, S. A. et al. Clin. Cancer Res. 17, 4550–4557 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Morgan, R. A. et al. Science 314, 126–129 (2006).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Johnson, L. A. et al. Blood 114, 535–546 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Robbins, P. F. et al. J. Clin. Oncol. 29, 917–924 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ferrone, S. & Marincola, F. M. Immunol. Today 16, 487–494 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Ma, C. et al. Nature Med. 17, 738–743 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antoni Ribas and Paul C. Tumeh are in the Department of Medicine, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1782, USA.,

    Antoni Ribas & Paul C. Tumeh

Authors
  1. Antoni Ribas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Paul C. Tumeh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Antoni Ribas.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ribas, A., Tumeh, P. Tumours switch to resist. Nature 490, 347–348 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11489

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11489

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Cancer

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Cancer newsletter — what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Cancer