Your Immune System ,Version 2.0 against Cancer

Your Immune System, Version 2.0

January 6, 2016
Immunotherapy is the use of a patient’s own immune system to treat an infection or disease. It might seem like an obvious approach—isn’t that the immune system’s point in the first place? The execution is more complicated than the name suggests, though, and messing with the body’s immune system can have, well, messy consequences. Despite this, a big victory did come this year, with researchers from the University of Maryland Medical Center producing a promising response in cancer patients using a form of immunotherapy. 70 percent of patients with a particularly lethal form of multiple myeloma showed a “significant clinical response” to the therapy, which involved researchers genetically engineering T cells to contain a receptor for a tumor antigen. The antigen is present in about 60 percent of patients with advanced myeloma, and the engineering quipped the T cells to spot and destroy the cancer cells.

The study, while small, was significant in the medical community. No major side effects were reported in the patients, meaning the treatment not only works, but poses little health risk.  The researchers say it’s only a matter of time before immunotherapy such as this replace chemo as the standard for cancer treatment.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Adapted from medicaldaily.com