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In a new international study led by Lund University in Sweden, researchers have uncovered how reprogrammed cancer cells can help orchestrate the immune system's attack on tumors. Experiments in mice revealed how immune cells are recruited and organized within tumors to mount an immune response. The findings could pave the way for more effective immunotherapy and, ultimately, help more patients benefit from the treatment.

Immunotherapy is a treatment that helps the body's own immune system fight cancer. The treatment has fundamentally changed cancer care, but it still does not work for everyone—particularly with cancers that are difficult to treat.

An important factor is how well the immune system can organize its attack inside the tumor. There is a process inside certain tumors that forms small clusters of immune cells—known as tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs)—which help coordinate the immune response.

Patients whose tumors contain these clusters respond better to immunotherapy and often have higher survival rates. But the formation of these clusters requires the right combination of inflammatory signals, immune cells and a tumor environment that allows the immune system to organize itself.

"Until now, it has been complicated to induce the formation of TLSs, because there have been no good methods for studying and engineering these structures in different types of tumors in the laboratory. We have now developed a new strategy to address this challenge," says Filipe Pereira, professor of molecular medicine at Lund University, who led the study published in the journal Immunity .

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