A study published in the international journal of research report on the Nature, from the university of Michigan, institutions such as the scientists have discovered a new type of connection or can reveal the molecular mechanism of cancer from the host immune system, if we are going to cancer compared to a series of puzzles, this paper studies may be able to put these puzzles stitching together to form a larger image.One of the main parts is the immune system and why certain immune cells stop functioning, another part is about how histones in immune cells are changed, and a third part is about how the cells' metabolism processes amino acids.

It's not known whether these problems can be linked, but in this study we can put the pieces together to understand how they work, says researcher Weiping Zou.In the paper, the researchers found links between three separate jigsaw puzzles, suggesting that targeting the methionine transporter in tumor cells may help immunotherapy fight off more cancers more effectively.Cancer begins with T cells, the guardians of the immune system. Cancer causes these cells to function abnormally and prevents T cells from attacking cancer cells.Researchers don't know for sure.

In this study, the researchers carefully analyzed the tumor microenvironment, especially how the tumor metabolism of amino acids, the results show that amino acid called methionine, the most profound effect on the survival and function of T cells with low methionine T cells become abnormal, and T cells in the lower levels of methionine may also change patterns of histone, thereby promoting T cell damage.Introducing tumor cells more recently might lead to a fight between tumor cells and T cells for methionine, over and over again, and eventually the tumor cells would win, taking methionine from the T cells and disabling the T cells.

After the researchers put forward a systematic approach to eliminating methionine in cancer cells, the researchers think the cancer cells will become addicted to methionine, and this article research has shown that this method may be a double-edged sword, the researchers, said Zou between tumor cells and T cells would compete for methionine, and T cells also need methionine, if missing methionine in tumor cells, T cells can't get this kind of amino acid, so the researchers wanted to selectively eliminate tumor cells rather than is the methionine in T cells.In fact, the results in this study suggest that methionine supplementation actually restores T-cell function, and high enough methionine levels mean that both tumor cells and T-cells get enough methionine.

One key point is that tumor cells may have more transporters to transport methionine. The researchers found that because T-cells compete for methionine, damage to these transporters may make T-cells healthier.Finally researchers Zou, points out that so far we still have a lot of mechanism is not clear, the details of the especially methionine metabolism pathway, late so we still need further study revealed between tumor cells and T cells, why will show different metabolic pathways, researchers hope to find a more specific targets for tumor cells, so that will not affect the function of T cells can kill tumor cells;The researchers are now working with drug discovery scientists to identify small molecule inhibitors that target methionine in tumor cells.