Vascular STING activation facilitates NK cell anti-tumor immunity in small cell lung cancer

By Anastazia Hartman Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive form of lung cancer, in part because many tumors evade the immune system. SCLC does this by shutting down MHC-I, a molecule that normally acts like a “red flag” to alert T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells. Ironically, this should make SCLC vulnerable to another type of immune cell, natural killer (NK) cells, which are designed to detect and destroy cells that lack MHC-I. NK cells can kill SCLC cells in laboratory settings; however, in SCLC patients, NK cells are largely absent from the tumor environment. Navin R