Cancer cells can be transformed into cells that help the immune system launch an attack on the tumor, according to a new study.
Scientists have developed a new type of cancer vaccine that promises to cure leukemia in mice. The method involves reprogramming cancer cells into immune cells so they can train the immune system to fight disease.
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In a one-on-one fight, our immune system would beat cancer every time. But this dastardly disease doesn’t fight fairly, instead it uses a series of underhanded tricks to avoid detection. Immunotherapy is a new treatment that involves recharging the immune system to better fight cancer, with some very promising early results.
One of the most common forms of immunotherapy involves removing T cells from a patient, programming them to recognize specific cancer antigens, and placing them in the body to track down the cancer using those antigens. The problem is that it requires some guesswork to figure out which antigens will be individually most beneficial for each patient.
So for the new study, scientists at Stanford Medical have developed a way to train T cells to recognize a wider range of antigens, increasing the chances that a patient’s immune system will successfully fight off cancer. The trick is to convert the cancer cells into macrophages, which are a type of antigen-presenting cell (AGP) that teach T cells what to look for, thus turning the modified cancer cells into guide dogs.
“We hypothesized that perhaps cancer cells reprogrammed to be macrophage cells might stimulate T cells because these antigens carry all the antigens of the cancer cells from which they originated,” said Ravi Majeti, senior author of the study.
To test this idea, the researchers had leukemia cells in mice transform into AHD. Indeed, the mice in the control group successfully cleared the cancer. What’s more, the vaccination strategy seemed to work in the long run, preventing recurrences of the disease.
“When we first saw the data showing a cure for leukemia in mice with working immune systems, we were amazed,” Majeti said. “We couldn’t believe it worked so well. What’s more, we showed that the immune system remembers what what these cells taught her. When we reinfected these mice with cancer more than 100 days after the initial tumor inoculation, they still had a strong immune response that protected them.”
The team then tested the method in mice with three different types of solid tumors—fibrosarcoma, breast cancer, and bone cancer. The results were not as effective as in leukemia, but still showed a positive effect.
Finally, the researchers experimented with cells taken from human patients. In summary, human leukemia-derived antihistamines were successful in teaching the same patient’s T cells what to look for. This suggests that the method could eventually be applied to humans, but there is still much more work to be done.
“We have shown that reprogrammed tumor cells can lead to a sustained and systemic attack on cancer in mice and a similar response with patient immune cells,” Majeti said. cancer vaccine. Ultimately, we could inject RNA into patients and transform enough cells to activate the immune system against cancer, without having to first remove the cells. This is science fiction at the moment, but this is the direction we are interested in developing.” .
Focus has previously written about a new application of artificial intelligence. He learned to read doctors’ notes and predict the outcome of cancer treatment.
