Ever heard of An Injection could Kill Cancer ? We have been writing a lot about cancer actually but nothing for its treatment, for sure. Here, we come up with an innovative treatment that now has been devised with a targeted injection and has successfully eliminated tumor cells in mice.
The researchers are so keen to find an effective treatment for all kinds of cancer from a past few years and have been devising new, and effective treatments and methodologies all the time. Well, only a few of them were applicable to an extent but that does not diminish the hope.
Some of the recent experiments included using the state-of-the-art nanotechnology to kill down the microtumors, engineering microbes to kill cancerous cells, and starving malignant cells to death.
The latest study from Stanford University School of Medicine in California has investigated another approach: injecting “minute” amounts of two reagents that initiate the body’s immune response directly into a malignant solid tumor.
So far, the studies involving mice has been proven successful. Dr. Ronald Levy, a senior study author explains that “When we use these two agents together, we see the elimination of tumors all over the body.”
The researchers now believe in this method as one of the agents involved is already approved for use in human beings while the other agent is under trial for treating lymphomas.
The study’s findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine a few months back.
How does the formula work?
Dr. Levy specialized in immunotherapy, a type of treatment in which one’s immune system is enhanced to kill the tumor cells in the body, to fight lymphoma or cancer of the lymphatic system.
Though there are several types of immunotherapy, some may include boosting the entire immune system of the body while others may include a more of targeted cells. But, the researchers noticed that they come up with certain limitations.
As there may be certain side effects, or it may be expensive and time-consuming as well. Well, the team’s method has definitely more advantages that do its limitations, one of which is its potential effectiveness as a treatment.
“Our approach uses a one-time application of very small amounts of two agents to stimulate the immune cells only within the tumor itself,” Dr. Levy explains. This method can “teach” immune cells how to fight against that specific type of cancer, which then allows them to migrate and destroy all other existing tumors.
Although the immune system plays the ultimate role in protecting the body against foreign particles, many types of cancerous cells happen to evade the defense system and enable them to grow and spread.
A type of white blood cells known as “T cells” play a vital role in regulating the body’s immune response. Normally, T cells would target and kill tumor cells but now too often these cancerous cells have learned “to trick” the T cells and escape the immune response.
Effective against many types of Cancer:
In a new study by Dr. Levy and his team, they delivered micrograms of two specific agents into one hard tumor site in each of the affected mice. The agents were as follow:
- CpG oligonucleotide, a short stretch of synthetic DNA that boosts the immune cells’ ability to express a receptor called OX40, which is found on the surface of T cells.
- An antibody that binds to the receptor, activating T cells.
Once these T cells get activated they will start spreading to the other parts of the body “hunting down” and destroying the tumor cells.
Most importantly Dr. Levy and his colleagues noticed that this method could be used to target a number of different cancerous cells; however, in each case, ‘T cells’ will eventually learn how to deal with a specific type of tumor cells and kill them.
In the laboratory, the scientists first applied this method to the model mouse of lymphoma, and surprisingly 87 out of 90 mice got rid of this cancer. In other cases, the tumor did recur but as soon as the researchers applied this method twice, it got eradicated.
Similar successful results were found in other mouse models of breast, colon, and skin cancer. Also, the mouse that was genetically engineered to develop the breast cancer responded well to this kind of treatment.
‘A Targeted Approach’
When the scientists implanted two different kinds of cancerous cells in the same model such as lymphoma and colon cancer but only injected the experimental formula into the lymphoma site, their results were mixed.
All the lymphoma cell did subside but the same did not happen with colon tumor cells, which confirms that T cells only learn to kill those tumor cells that are next to them before injection.
As Dr. Levy continues, “This is a very targeted approach. Only the tumor that shares the protein targets displayed by the treated site is affected. We’re attacking specific targets without having to identify exactly what proteins the T cells are recognizing.”
Clinically, the researchers are now planning to carry on the trial on those having low-grade lymphoma. Dr. Levy is quite hopeful that if the trial goes on successfully they will soon be able to kill any kind of cancer cells in the human body with this therapy.
“I don’t think there’s a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system,” Dr. Levy concludes.
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