British scientists claim to have found a way to make the human immune system to effectively fight cancerous tumors.
Its essence is to find the most vulnerable spot of each individual tumor – so to speak, its Achilles’ heel -. and focus on his immune system
on this method of therapy talked for a long time, but only now, say scientists from University college London, they were able to find mechanisms to identify cancer in the structure of the “weak” areas.
The opening includes an individual approach to each case of cancer, the study of cells of each tumor, which in practice can be very expensive. However, at this point, scientists say, is the most encouraging results in this area in recent years.
Clinical trials of a new method of treatment, scientists expect to spend the next two years.
A vaccine instead of chemotherapy
According to British scientists, their proposed method based on the study of DNA, will replace chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
instead, patients will be offered the vaccine made at based on proteins extracted from a cancer patient’s tumors. The vaccine will “run” the immune system to fight cancer cells.
The immune system attracted to struggle with cancer before, but for the most part all known anti-cancer vaccines have proven ineffective.
Scientists University college explain this by saying that the body’s defense mechanisms directed at the wrong target
the fact that the cancer -. it is not a single, uniform education. It consists of a completely different, different mutated cells, and therefore act some parts of the tumor can be different.
As the doctors say, a new therapy brings the idea of individual treatment to perfection.
“For each patient, in fact will be developed a unique method of treatment,” – said professor Charles Swanton of the Institute of the University college of cancer
See also:
” Cancer – a moving target “
cancer tumors can be compared with wood. She has a trunk, which began cell mutation, and then from this trunk in different directions expand branches, and each held their mutational processes.
This is called heterogenesis.
The breakthrough scientists is that they have learned to recognize the cells in the trunk, which alter the antigen -. proteins located on the surface of tumor cells
For the effects on mutations in the “trunk” offers two options
- develop a customized vaccine for each patient that help the immune system to recognize them
- find the body’s immune cells, which have “attacked” on mutating, multiplying their numbers in the laboratory and placed back into the body
“This is a very important step that allows us to look at heterogenesis as a problem, and understand why cancer has such a large force, “- says Marco Gerlinger of the Institute for the study of cancer
in this case, the scientist recognizes that it is too early to say how much would be easy to implement the proposed method
<.. p> “Many types of cancer are not static, they are constantly evolving. This moving targets, which is not easy to get, – explains Gerlinger. – Cancer, which changes all the time, can “reset” the original antigen, or to mask other antigens to bring down the immune system astray “
Describing the results of its latest research, the scientists themselves say.” We propose to remove the immune system with brakes, steering wheel and give it a push in the right direction “in the hands.
They hope that in the very near future a new method of therapy will help save many lives.
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