Cancer cells turned into a tumor-fighting agent

Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine reprogrammed tumor cells

leukemia in mice into immune cells to teachthe body fights cancer. The modified tumor cells act as antigen-presenting cells that train T lymphocytes to recognize and fight cancer as a foreign component.

Immunotherapy - artificial stimulationimmunity, which helps the body use its own means to fight cancer. One possible form of such therapy is training T-lymphocytes to recognize cancer antigens. The traditional problem with this approach is that there are many cancer antigens, and doctors sometimes have to guess which ones will be most effective.

Scientists transformed cells taken from mice withacute leukemia, into macrophages that act as antigen-presenting cells. With their help, the researchers were able to "train" T-lymphocytes to detect all the antigens characteristic of the cancer of a particular patient, and form immunity to it.

The study showed that mice with leukemia, which were injected with T-lymphocytes "trained" on their cancer cells, were completely cured of cancer. However, the treatment had a long-term effect.

When we reinfected these mice with cancer more than 100 days after the initial vaccination, they still had a strong immune response that protected them.

Ravi Majeti, MD, Stanford University and head of research

In further analyses, the researchers showed thata similar strategy, albeit with less efficiency, works on other types of tumors, as well as on human leukemia cells in in vitro (in vitro) experiments. The authors of the work believe that the method can be adopted for the treatment of oncology in humans and, in the future, even for the creation of a cancer vaccine.

Read more:

Named a vitamin that protects the brain from dementia

See how the Earth has changed over 100 million years on the most detailed map

It turned out which men are the most fertile: their sperm is 50% better than the rest