Mohammad Balood, Maryam Ahmadi, Tuany Eichwald, Ali Ahmadi, Abdelilah Majdoubi, Karine Roversi, Katiane Roversi, Christopher T Lucido, Anthony C Restaino, Siyi Huang, Lexiang Ji, Kai-Chih Huang, Elise Semerena, Sini C Thomas, Alexandro E Trevino, Hannah Merrison, Alexandre Parrin, Benjamin Doyle, Daniel W Vermeer, William C Spanos, Caitlin S Williamson, Corey R Seehus, Simmie L Foster, Hongyue Dai, Chengyi J Shu, Manu Rangachari, Jacques Thibodeau, Sonia V Del Rincon, Ronny Drapkin, Moutih Rafei, Nader Ghasemlou, Paola D Vermeer, Clifford J Woolf, Sebastien Talbot
Solid tumours are innervated by nerve fibres that arise from the autonomic and sensory peripheral nervous systems1-5 . Whether the neo-innervation of tumours by pain-initiating sensory neurons affects cancer immunosurveillance remains unclear. Here we show that melanoma cells interact with nociceptor neurons, leading to increases in their neurite outgrowth, responsiveness to noxious ligands and neuropeptide release. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP)-one such nociceptor-produced neuropeptide-directly increases the exhaustion of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells, which limits their capacity to eliminate melanoma...
November 2022: Nature