Collagen-Bound Interleukin 12 Converts “Cold” Tumors Into “Hot” Ones

Although immunotherapies for patients with solid tumors such as melanoma can be dramatically successful, the majority of patients are resistant and require alternative treatments. While the cytokine interleukin-12 is well known for potentiating the effect of immunotherapies, such as checkpoint blockade, it couldn’t be used because of toxicity. At the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, Jun Ishihara, PhD, a lecturer at London’s Imperial College reported on a protein bioengineering approach in which IL/12 is bound to collagen from the extracellular matrix of the tumor. This targets the cytokine’s action to operate specifically on cancer while hopefully avoiding most of the off-target toxicities previously observed with unbound IL/12.  After the conference, OncTimesTalk’s Peter Goodwin called to see him at his London laboratory.