Recent discoveries in the field of immunology continue to offer exciting applications in the fight against cancer. Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently published an article explaining how altering a person’s immune system could potentially help patients fight cancer.
The human immune system is highly complex and coordinated. From early on in life, human immune system cells are able to recognize the body’s own cells while identifying and destroying invading cells, like bacteria. Cells called T regulator cells (TReg) help moderate and direct an appropriate immunological reaction.
Many autoimmune disorders are a result of the immune system becoming confused. Simple allergies where the immune system is stimulated by the presence of an allergen like pollen may pose minor inconveniences. However, other situations can be more serious. In multiple sclerosis, where the body attacks its own cells, scientists have been working diligently to unravel which immune system cells play a key role and how they can be altered. This research has led scientists toward studying TReg cells for cancer treatment.
TReg cells generally help calm down the immune system once an infection is over. But recently, scientists have concluded a study with mice that showed that by altering mice TReg cells, the scientists could give the immune systems of the mice a boost and turn it toward fighting lung cancer cells. The findings are one step in the right direction of modifying human TReg cells to do the same thing.
Scientists are quick to point out that while their results are exciting, they are preliminary. Human immune systems are more complex than that of mice. Researchers need to be sure they can control the immunotherapy methods such that the cancer cells are destroyed but an autoimmune disease does not result.
In the future, the power of the human immune system may be understood enough to safely direct it to fight cancer cells. For now scientists are working out the details needed before human test trials can occur. The current research is being done in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom.
References:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23724220
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18512029
http://www.nature.com/nrd/index.html
http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v12/n1/full/nrd3683.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21110316
