An engineered ligand trap inhibits leukemia inhibitory factor as pancreatic cancer treatment strategy

Abstract

Hunter et al. engineer a high affinity, soluble variant of leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) to serve as a ligand trap for the LIF cytokine. They further demonstrate that this engineered LIFR exhibits improved affinity relative to the wild-type receptor, leading to better disruption of LIF signaling in cancer cells, and highlighting promise of such ligand traps as therapeutic strategy for cancer treatment.