How ovarian cancers evade the immune system

(Krista Conger/ Scope, Stanford Medicine) — It’s diabolical, and so clever. Recent research by cancer biologist Wendy Fantl, PhD, and immunologist and cancer biologist Veronica Gonzalez, PhD, shows that ovarian tumors thrive by convincing nearby immune cells that the cancer cells are those of a developing fetus.

They do so by transferring a molecule called CD9 from their cell surface to the surface of the immune cells via a kind of cellular resource swapping known as trogocytosis.

CD9 is usually only found on immune cells, called natural killer cells, during early pregnancy, and its presence signals to the cells to stand down in the face of a developing, immunologically foreign, fetus. (…)