Akbay Lab designs Binding Antibody

New treatment that stimulates natural killer cells could eventually offer option for difficult-to-treat tumors, UTSW researchers find.

An investigational therapy significantly shrank lung cancer tumors that are notoriously resistant to treatment by encouraging an attack from natural killer (NK) cells in an animal model, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers shows. The findings, published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, could lead to new types of immunotherapy that rely on this novel strategy.

“The approach we studied here could eventually become a viable therapy for patients whose tumors are not responsive to current immunotherapies,” said study leader Esra Akbay, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology and a member of the Development and Cancer Research Program in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern.

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Esra Akbay, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Pathology and a member of the Development and Cancer Research Program in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern.