US scientists have managed to dramatically slow the spread of cancer to healthy organs in laboratory mice by genetically altering immune cells, a new approach in treating the deadly disease, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) said on Thursday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th March, 2021) US scientists have managed to dramatically slow the spread of cancer to healthy organs in laboratory mice by genetically altering immune cells, a new approach in treating the deadly disease, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) said on Thursday.
"This is a novel approach to immunotherapy that appears to have promise as a potential treatment for metastatic cancer," leader of the NCI study Rosandra Kaplan said in a press release.
The study capitalized on a 2005 discovery by Kaplan of pre-metastatic niches in healthy organs. Before cancer spreads, it sends out signals that get distant sites ready for the cancer's arrival, the release said.
The NCI team mainly studied mice implanted with rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of cancer that develops in the muscles of children and often spreads to the lungs. The mice were then treated with Myeloid that had been genetically modified to attack the pre-metastatic niches, the release said.
Mice treated with the altered cells had less metastatic cancer in the lungs, smaller tumors in the muscle and they lived substantially longer than mice treated with non modified Myeloid cells. The researchers found similar results when they studied mice with pancreatic tumors that spread to the liver, the release said.
The team plans to test the safety of genetically altered human Myeloid cells in a clinical trial of adults with cancer and, if it proves to be safe, in children and adolescents with cancer, the release added.
