Scientists track Immunotherapy: A boon for Cancer patients

California, February 3: Cancer patients have to go through many treatments in which they have to suffer a lot but this invention may prove as a boon for them. Though it may not cure cancer it may fight against Cancer for a longer period.

          

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a compound that when injected into a tumor destroys it along with all the other cancerous masses present in the body.

The combination of two agents that stimulate the immune system sparked a body-wide reaction in mice, destroying cancer cells both near and very far from the initial injection point. The success of the treatment, which worked for different types of cancer, means that human trials will be starting soon.

 

This surprisingly effective treatment works using the patient’s own immune cells. The drugs “turn on” immune cells within the tumor that had previously been put to sleep by cancer. The drugs then amplify the ability of these immune cells so they can be much more effective in targeting and destroying the invader.

CAR T cell therapy trains the body’s immune system to target and destroys cancer cells in the blood; scientists take people’s own immune cells (T cells) and genetically engineer them to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The immune system can then attack cancer cells in the same way it does bacteria and viruses, and the therapy can lead to remissions from blood cancers of up to 80%.

So what is so different about this solution? Other treatments, like CAR T-cell therapy, which is used for types of leukemia and lymphoma, involve removing immune cells from the patient, manipulating them, then putting them back into the body. This and other immunotherapies can have side effects, are generally expensive and only work with certain types of cancers.