On Jul. 24, 2025, a team of researchers from TGen, part of City of Hope, and Baylor Scott & White Research Institute announced a study has revealed a potential new therapeutic strategy for fighting lung cancer that harnesses one of the body’s immune cells, natural killer (NK) cells. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and while immune-based therapeutics have demonstrated success in lung cancer, they offer benefit to less than 30 percent of lung cancer patients.

The study results, published in Frontiers in Immunology, discovered that tiny particles derived from a patient’s own NK cells, known as extracellular vesicles (EVs), may kill lung cancer cells through reinvigorating the immune system’s ability to fight back against resistant tumors.

Lung cancer is expected to take the lives of 125,000 people in the U.S. this year, with most cases being non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Immune-based treatments, specifically immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), have become a key part of early treatment for some. For many patients a lack of response, harmful side effects, or resistance to the treatment over time, limits how well these therapies work in the long run.

In a cohort of lung cancer patients, the team leveraged leading-edge single cell sequencing and protein characterization methods to explore the circulating immune cell repertoire as well as the immune environment in the tumor.

The researchers were able to isolate EVs derived specifically from NK cells from the blood of lung cancer patients. These EVs are tiny packets released by cells that can act as messengers, or in this case cause cytotoxic effects, often causing them to die.

In lung cancer cells taken from patients, the NKEV therapy caused cell death alone and in combination with standard of care treatments, and increased NK cell invasion into tumor cells.

The researchers also identified RNA and protein markers in the NKEVs linked to immune activation, paving the way for personalized therapeutic strategies. While more work is needed, this research marks an important step toward boosting immune-based therapies—potentially by enhancing extracellular vesicles derived from the patient’s own immune system—for targeting lung cancer.