In a groundbreaking discovery by the Laboratories of Sigmund Hultqvist at Stockholm University, which are based on the discovery of new targetable cancer cells, scientists have described previously unknown how the cancer cells can resist treatment and prove how it is possible to alter the cells and achieve an effective antitumor therapy. The research indicates that the new targetable cells have the potential to reduce relapse in patients with solid tumors.

For more than 20 years, Sigmund Hultqvist, Stockholm University bioengineer, has worked with his colleague Karl theodorou to develop new cancer-targeting immunotherapies. Among the most successful obstacles have been the observed effect in cancer cells. Once the therapy is on high therapeutic doses and longer-lived in the body, the resistance becomes obvious and it is approximately three years from the beginning of treatment.

Swedish researchers have now studied how some cancer cells resist treatment with current antitumor immunotherapies and become antitumor resistant. The research, conducted with colleagues in Finland and Japan and funded by Sigmund’s lab in Stockholm, Sweden, has just been published in Trends in Immunology (TIM) and will be extended into high-throughput screening and clinical trials.