Tumor immune escape by autotaxin: keeping eosinophils at bay.

Secreted autotaxin (ATX) promotes tumor progression by producing the pleiotropic lipid mediator lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). In a recent Nature Cancer paper, Bhattacharyya et al. show that ATX/LPA signaling suppresses CCL11-driven infiltration of eosinophils into the pancreatic tumor microenvironment to facilitate tumor progression, thus revealing a new ATX-mediated immune escape mechanism and highlighting the antitumor potential of eosinophils.