Targeting the complement system to improve radiation response

我们的实验室试图了解癌症是如何利用我们的免疫系统的一部分来获得优势的。我们最新的工作集中在补体系统上，补体系统是免疫系统的一部分，最著名的是它在帮助对抗感染方面的作用。我们对免疫系统的这一部分非常感兴趣，因为癌细胞似乎为了自己的生存优势而劫持了它。我们正在探索这样一种想法，即当癌细胞暴露在外部损害源中时，可能特别依赖于这些被劫持的功能，例如那些在治疗过程中用于杀死肿瘤的损害源。我们的工作确实表明，如果我们(用药物)阻断这个系统的某些部分，我们可能能够使癌细胞在放射治疗后更有可能死亡。有趣的是，阻断这一系统的某些部分也可能减少辐射对健康肠道的毒性影响。因此，这些发现表明，针对这一系统的药物可以减少辐射的副作用，同时还可以提高肿瘤的放射治疗效果。我们努力了解这是如何运作的细节。这些研究的最终目标是能够使用针对这一系统的药物来改善患者的放射治疗。

Our lab tries to understand how cancers exploit part of our immune system to their advantage. Our most recent work has focused on, the complement system, a part of the immune system that is best known for its role in helping fight infections. We have become very interested in this part of the immune system since cancer cells seem to hijack it for their own survival advantage. We are exploring the idea that cancer cells may be particularly dependent on these hijacked functions when exposed to external sources of damage, such as those used to kill the tumour during treatment. Our work indeed suggests that if we block certain parts of this system (with drugs) we may be able to make the cancer cell more likely to die following radiotherapy. Intriguingly, blocking certain parts of this system may also reduce the toxic effects of radiation in healthy gut. These findings therefore suggest that a drug against this system could reduce the side effects of radiation while also improving the effectiveness of radiotherapy on the tumour. We work to understand the details of how this works. The ultimate goal of these studies is to be able to use drugs against this system to improve radiotherapy in patients.