Chinese scientists have programmed stem cells to "find and destroy" cancer, an important step towards a breakthrough in cancer treatment.
According to the Website of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post on November 22, Wang Jinyong, a professor at the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his research team said that this technology has been successfully used to treat mice with thymic cancer, which is an important organ of the human immune system.
According to a paper published last week in the Chinese scientific journal Cell Research, researchers used stem cells to grow initial immune cells, which then develop into T cells, which are formed in the thymus gland and play a central role in the body's immune response.
After a period of time, the tumor disappeared. Because the new T cells have memories, the treated mice will never develop the same type of cancer again for the rest of their lives, the report said. In a statement published on the cassia website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the research team said that this approach could lead to breakthroughs in the field of cancer treatment.
Immunotherapies are becoming increasingly popular in the fight against cancer, and while the use of T cells isn't new, they're often extracted from human blood rather than produced from stem cells. In addition, the cost of extracting T cells is extremely high, with this fee amounting to thousands of dollars in China.
After the T cells are extracted, they must be programmed to play a role in attacking cancer cells, which is still a technical problem. In addition, some patients are unable to produce enough T cells due to poor physical condition.
To that end, scientists around the world have been trying to generate t cells from stem cells, which resemble a blank canvas that can be programmed to become any other kind of cell in the human body.
The Chinese research team did not try to generate mature T cells, but programmed stem cells to form seed cells, which over time will develop into T cells.
The technique reportedly allows for "successful regeneration of a complete T-cell immune system containing taxa of T cells that perform various functions." This means that the research team has "unlimited sources of T cells ... Constitute a large regenerative immune force to protect the body."
Professor Wang Shengdian, a researcher at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who was not involved in the study, said scientists have made some major breakthroughs in the fight against cancer in recent years. For example, he said, with the help of immunotherapy, people with certain types of leukemia now have a 90 percent chance of overcoming the disease.
Wang Shengdian said that although Wang Jinyong's team did not succeed in generating mature T cells, it took an important step toward this goal, and the important task now is to generate T cells specifically for various types of cancer.
"The biggest challenge is finding a precise target for the T cells, otherwise it will fly aimlessly like a missile without a guidance system," he said. ”