New nanoparticles stimulate the immune system to attack ovarian tumorsTargeted particles carrying the cytokine IL-12 can jump-start T cells, allowing them to clear tumors while avoiding side effects.
Anne Trafton |
MIT NewsPublication Date: October 31, 2025
Cancer immunotherapy, which uses drugs that stimulate the body’s immune cells to attack tumors, is a promising approach to treating many types of cancer. However, it doesn’t work well for some tumors, including ovarian cancer.
To elicit a better response, MIT researchers have designed new nanoparticles that can deliver an immune-stimulating molecule called IL-12 directly to ovarian tumors. When given along with immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, IL-12 helps the immune system launch an attack on cancer cells.
Studying a mouse model of ovarian cancer, the researchers showed that this combination treatment could eliminate metastatic tumors in more than 80 percent of the mice. When the mice were later injected with more cancer cells, to simulate tumor recurrence, their immune cells remembered the tumor proteins and cleared them again.
“What’s really exciting is that we’re able to deliver IL-12 directly in the tumor space. And because of the way that this nanomaterial is designed to allow IL-12 to be borne on the surfaces of the cancer cells, we have essentially tricked the cancer into stimulating immune cells to arm themselves against that cancer,” says Paula Hammond, an MIT Institute Professor, MIT’s vice provost for faculty, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. ...
This one jumped out at me, as a family member has been battling ovarian cancer for over 2-1/2 years, and she's explained how her type of cancer responds differently from, say, lung cancer (as the article describes) to certain therapies like immunotherapy. This development really may offer hope. I've sent her the article and hope she'll share it with her new oncologist who, unlike the last one, seems very proactive.
