Recently, He Wei, a young teacher in the School of Basic Medicine of AHMU, published a research paper titled High-salt diet inhibits tumour growth in mice via regulating myeloid-derived suppressor cell differentiation in an internationally renowned academic journal Nature Communications (IF:11.878) as the lead author. His research was accomplished with the cooperation of Prof. Zhang Junfeng and Prof. Dong Lei from the School of Life Sciences of Nanjing University.
This research has overturned the traditional understanding that “high-salt diet brings nothing but harm to health”. It pointed out that in tumor microenvironment, high-salt diet could decrease the number of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, promote their differentiation and phenotype transformation, consequently re-activate the anti-tumor effect of T-cells, thus inhibiting tumor growth. What’s more, high-salt diet could also increase the anti-tumor activity of PD-1 inhibitor by regulating P38/MAPK-NFAT5 signaling pathways and enhancing proinflammatory factor expression, thus increasing anti-tumor immunoreactivity. In the research process, He Wei and his team overcame various difficulties, broke numerous research problems, conducted a considerable amount of experimental work and repeated verification, and finally made such significant progress in the field of tumor immunotherapy. It provides theoretical basis and new ideas for the clinical seeking for new methods of tumor treatment.