Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have just published a paper explaining how cord-blood-derived immune cells target B-Cell Cancers. It is an exciting breakthrough that will help researchers develop new cancer treatments.
Immune cells are very powerful at tracking down abnormal cells in the human body and killing them. However, they have a weak spot when it comes to cancer cells, which can remove chemical signals that the immune system uses to identify abnormal cells.
The authors of this new research decided to give the immune system a helping hand by developing cord-blood-derived immune cells that could identify cancer cells more easily. They took the natural cells from cord blood donations and altered their chimeric antigen receptor. Once altered, the cord-blood-derived cells could spot certain leukaemia and lymphoma cells more easily.
It’s not the first time that stem cells have been genetically engineered to improve their usefulness. Other scientists have changed the structure of stem cells and even attached useful viruses to them to beat cancer.
The cord-blood-derived stem cells used in this trial also had a stronger persistence in the body and a gene that allowed to be easily shut down if they caused an inflammatory response.
The trial began in June, testing the treatment on patients with relapsed or resistant acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), or non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Dr. Katy Rezvani explains why harnessing the body’s natural immune cells is so effective, saying: “Natural killer cells are the immune system’s most potent killers, but they are short-lived and cancers manage to evade a patient’s own NK cells to progress,” she continued, “Our cord-blood derived NK cells, genetically equipped with a receptor that focuses them on B-cell malignancies and with interleukin-15 to help them persist longer — potentially for months instead of two or three weeks — are designed to address these challenges.”
Source: Genetically enhanced, cord-blood derived immune cells strike B-cell cancers
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