Train the immune system to kill cancer by cancer cells

Train the immune system to kill cancer by cancer cells

Train the immune system to kill cancer by cancer cells.  Science: Use cancer cells to train the immune system to kill cancer and have long-term effects.

Researchers are working on testing this strategy on breast and colon cancer and believe that it can theoretically treat any type of cancer. They hope to eventually use this therapy in clinical trials.

In recent years, the rapid development of tumor immunotherapy has brought new hope for mankind to completely overcome cancer. Immunotherapy is to attack cancer through the body’s own immune system, providing many cancer patients with a new way to treat cancer. However, many cancer immunotherapies are expensive, have devastating side effects, and are only effective for a small number of patients.

On March 24, 2021, researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago published an article titled “Lymphangiogenesis-inducing vaccines elicit potent and long-lasting T cell immunity against melanomas” in the top journal “Science Advances” Research papers.

Researchers have developed a new therapeutic vaccine that uses the patient’s own tumor cells to train their immune system to detect and kill cancer. It can have a long-term effect.

The author said that this is a new immunotherapy strategy, which may be more effective, cheaper and safer than other immunotherapies. This is truly personalized medicine. Compared with other therapies, it is possible to overcome many problems.

The working principle of this vaccine is similar to the traditional flu vaccine. It uses a less potent pathogen (treated the patient’s own cancer cells) to train the immune system to fight the disease.

It is worth noting that this is not a preventive measure, but a therapeutic vaccine, which means that it can activate the immune system and destroy cancer cells in any part of the body.

The first author of the paper tested many different strategies before deciding on the vaccine method, so that immune “training” could be carried out far away from the actual tumor.

To make these cells, the researchers used mouse melanoma cells and modified them to secrete vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C).

After transforming these cells into cells expressing VEGF-C, the research team irradiated them, causing them to die within a few weeks. When they injected these cells back into the mouse’s skin, they found that these dead tumor cells could attract and activate immune cells, and then the immune cells could recognize and kill the actual tumor cells growing on the other side of the mouse. Since each tumor has the characteristics of hundreds of molecules that can be recognized by its unique immune system, the vaccine promotes a broad and powerful immune response.

Complete protection against tumor attack and long-term immune memory

The result was the suppression of tumor growth in all mice. When tumor cells were reintroduced after 10 months, it also caused immune memory and prevented the growth of new tumors.

Studies have shown that this therapy may have a long-term effect on metastasis and recurrence.

Conceptually, this is the first strategy to take advantage of local lymphatic activation to produce a more powerful and specific immune response to tumor cells. Different from immunotherapy strategies, the general way of stimulating the immune system, such as checkpoint blockade or the current preclinical development of many cytokines, this new immunotherapy only activates tumor-specific immune cells. In theory, this will avoid the common side effects of immune stimulants, including immune toxicity and even death.

It is reported that researchers are working to test this strategy on breast and colon cancer, and believe that in theory it can treat any type of cancer. They hope to eventually use this therapy in clinical trials.

(source:internet, reference only)

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