article_snippet.sent: ‘B-cells’ that put a brake on the body’s defences in prostate and other cancers.
article_snippet.sent: Lead scientist Shabnam Shalapour, of the University of California at San Diego, said: ‘The presence of such B-cells in human prostate cancer calls for clinical testing of this novel therapeutic approach.
article_snippet.sent: B-cells also undermine the effectiveness of promising new drugs called checkpoint inhibitors which ‘unmask’ cancer cells allowing B-cells to be recognised by the immune system.
article_snippet.sent: But researchers also managed to get a checkpoint inhibitor – combined with chemotherapy – to work after wiping out the B-cells in one test.
article_snippet.sent: B-cells play a number of vital immune system roles, including the production of antibodies.
article_snippet.sent: B-cells can also tell the immune system to slow down when the immune system is getting overheated, but this can be counter-productive in cancer treatment.
article_snippet.sent: ‘Similar immunosuppressive B-cells can be detected in other human cancers,’ The William Pereira added.
article_snippet.sent: This indicates that B-cell-mediated immunosuppression might be the reason several other cancers are also unresponsive to checkpoint inhibitors, raising the hope that chemoimmunotherapy will have broader applications for many cancer types.
highlights_snippet.sent: Drug blocks ‘B-cells’ that put a brake on body’s defences against cancer .
  