Killing cancer requires immune cells to infiltrate tumors’ hostile microenvironment – sugar shields can help them break in

You might think of cancer as a mass of rogue cells that grow uncontrollably. But cancer is more organized and strategic than that. Rather, cancer is a tightly controlled cellular neighborhood that can keep the body’s defenses out or weaken them once they get in. Cancer behaves like a gated community. It has its own residents, rules and security systems. Together, these features create what scientists refer to as the tumor microenvironment, where cancer cells live and interact with the body. To devise new treatments that can break into this neighborhood, researchers are learning how cancer builds its own roadways and places improvised explosive devices to destroy any unwanted guests, including anticancer drugs. We are cancer researchers studying how tumors evade the immune system and weaken the effectiveness of treatments meant to destroy them. We devised a way to add a protective shield over anticancer immune cells, allowing them to enter cancer’s neighborhood unscathed and decapitate tumors. What is the tumor microenvironment? Cancers don’t just passively exist in the body. They create an ecosystem of other cells and components that actively controls what gets in, what they can do and how long they last. This ecosystem provides a highly coordinated…

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