Signalling: Loss of Cbl-b unleashes anti-metastatic natural killer cells

摘要

Despite several advances in cancer treatment, metastasis remains a major therapeutic challenge. A new study by Paolino et al. has shown that deletion or inhibition of casitas B-lineage lymphoma-b (Cbl-b) decreases metastasis in various mouse tumour models by activating natural killer (NK) cells.Previous studies from this group and others established that deletion of Cbl-b or specific inactivation of its E3 ubiquitin ligase activity in mice caused rejection of multiple tumour types and that this was mediated by the activation of CD8+ T cells. The authors sought to clarify these results and observed that xenograft tumour growth was significantly delayed in Cbl-b"'" mice and that this was concomitant with an increase in NK cells in tumours from these mice.