Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden publish new findings in the journal Cancer Discovery showing how pharmacological activation of the protein p53 boosts the immune response against tumours. The results can be of significance to the development of new combination therapies that will give more cancer patients access to immunotherapy.
Given its ability to react to damage to cellular DNA and the key part it is thought to play in preventing tumour growth, the protein p53 has been dubbed the “guardian of the genome.” Half of all tumours have mutations in the gene that codes for the protein, and in many other tumours, p53 is disabled by another protein, MDM2.
