A single dose may potentially eradicate cancer cells.
** straight-shootin' take on a groundbreaking cancer fighter 💉**
In the ever-evolving battle against cancer, scientists have cooked up a new weapon: a powerful injection that wipes out tumors with ease, verified in mice.
The hunt for effective cancer treatments has been fierce over the years, offering fresh hope time and time again. However, recent experiments have caught the spotlight, such as employing high-tech nanotech to nab microtumors, creating microbes to thwart cancer cells, and starving tumors until they shrivel up and die.
A group of researchers, hailing from Stanford University School of Medicine in California, took a leap with a wholly different approach: introducing "teeny" doses of two agents that kick-start the body's immune response directly into a malignant solid tumor.
According to senior study author, Dr. Ronald Levy, their tests resulted in tumors vanishing all over the bodies of the mice. The treatment bypasses the need to find tumor-specific immune targets or sweeping the immune system into action with no customization.
Moreover, one of the agents used has already been given approval for human therapy, and the other is under clinical trials for treating lymphoma.
Details of the study were published yesterday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
A one-and-done treatment 🆕
Dr. Levy is no stranger to immunotherapy, which entails enhancing the body’s immune response to target cancer cells. He specializes in taking down lymphoma, or cancer of the lymphatic system. There are various immunotherapy techniques out there, but they all come with drawbacks. They might cause side effects, take a long time, or simply be too expensive.
Dr. Levy's new approach proposes a one-time application of teeny amounts of two agents to stimulate immune cells solely within the tumor. This method enables immune cells to "learn" how to battle against that specific type of cancer, letting them vanquish other existing tumors as well.
Normally, T cells are responsible for detecting and eliminating harmful foreign bodies, but cancer cells find ways to trick them, allowing growth and spread. This new method, on the other hand, directly targets cancer cells without needing to recognize proteins they may be hiding behind.
Effective against many types of cancer 🌟
In the lab, the scientists first applied this method to a mouse model of lymphoma. 87 out of 90 mice were left cancer-free. Even mice with breast, colon, and skin cancer demonstrated similar success rates. Mice that were genetically engineered to develop breast cancer spontaneously responded well to the treatment too.
When the researchers went a step further by injecting two different types of tumor—lymphoma and colon cancer—in the same animal, they discovered the immune cells learned to tackle only the cancer cells near the injection site. In other words, an attack on breast cancer tumors, for example, does not guarantee that colon cancer tumors will join the fight.
As Dr. Levy explains, "This is a targeted approach. Tumors displaying the same protein targets as the treated site will be attacked. We're going after specific targets without having to figure out exactly what proteins the T cells are recognizing.”
Stanford University School of Medicine is preparing a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of this treatment in people with low-grade lymphoma. If all goes well, they plan to extend this therapy to a variety of cancer tumors in humans.
"I believe we could potentially target any type of cancer tumor, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system," concludes Dr. Levy.
- The new treatment, which involves the use of two agents to stimulate immune cells directly into a malignant solid tumor, has shown promising results in various types of cancer, such as lymphoma, breast, and colon cancer.
- This one-time application of the agents, which enables immune cells to learn how to battle against specific types of cancer, could potentially be extended to a variety of cancer tumors in humans.
- The agents used in this treatment have already been approved for human therapy for certain medical conditions and are under clinical trials for treating lymphoma.
- The aim of this treatment is to bypass the need for finding tumor-specific immune targets or sweeping the immune system into action with no customization, making it an alternative to traditional immunotherapies that may cause side effects, take a long time, or be too expensive.
