Immunotherapy is a modern approach to cancer treatment that uses a patient’s own immune system to help fight tumors. It has made an incredible impact on treating cancers in many different organ systems, including the lung, kidney, and bladder-but for other cancers, such as liver cancer, the therapy has been much less effective. This discrepancy is especially concerning as liver cancer rates have nearly tripled in the last 40 years.
To understand why immunotherapy may be less effective in treating liver cancer, scientists at the Salk Institute took a closer look at how the immune system and liver interact. While studying mouse and human liver tumors, they discovered that certain bile acids in the liver could affect the activity of cancer-fighting immune…