Lactate suppresses STING activation to promote tumor immune evasion.

Lactate inhibits STING activation by upregulating LDHA activity, promoting tumor immune evasion in cancer.

• Why it matters: Understanding how tumors evade immune responses is crucial for developing effective therapies, as lactate's role as a signaling molecule in immune suppression was not fully known.
• What they did: Guo and colleagues investigated this by examining the effects of lactate on STING signaling, revealing that lactate acts as a competitive antagonist through an EGFR-mediated pathway that increases LDHA activity.
• The result: This finding highlights lactate's capacity to suppress immune activation, suggesting that targeting lactate production or its signaling pathways could enhance anti-tumor immunity.