ipilimumab通过促进新的免疫反应来达到治疗黑色素瘤的目的

针对皮肤癌的激活免疫系统的药物，是通过促进新的癌症应答的免疫反应，而不是增强之前存在的反应来促进对癌症的治疗的。

治疗黑色素瘤的药物普利姆玛是通过激活免疫系统中称做T细胞的细胞来实现治疗的，T细胞能够识别肿瘤分子上的不同的信号，并且将他们作为破坏的标记。荷兰癌症研究所的Pia Kvistborg和Ton Schumacher的团队将在用普利姆玛治疗前和治疗后的患者的T细胞进行比较，发现药物扩大了通过T细胞识别的黑色素瘤的范围。但是黑色素瘤特异的T细胞在治疗之前就已经存在了，但是这类T细胞并没有增加，这表明，该药物促进了新的免疫反应。

因此，本文的作者认为，对于其他的癌症的免疫疗法，提高可以识别癌症细胞的T细胞范围或许是治疗癌症的一种新的思路。

原文：

A drug that activates the immune system against a type of skin cancer does so by promoting new immune responses to cancer, rather than amplifying pre-existing ones.

The melanoma drug ipilimumab boosts the activity of immune-system cells called T cells, which recognize a variety of molecules on tumour cells, marking them for destruction. Pia Kvistborg and Ton Schumacher of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam and their team compared T cells from melanoma patients before and after treatment and found that the drug broadened the range of melanoma targets recognized by T cells. But melanoma-specific T cells that were already present before treatment did not expand their ranks, suggesting that the drug stimulates new responses.

Boosting the range of T cells could be a useful strategy for other cancer immunotherapies, the authors say.

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