Researchers have found something in our body that could change the face of the cancer war

The past decade has proven how effective our immune system is in treating various cancers. Now it turns out that there is the potential to find the solution everyone is waiting for - a uniform cure for all cancerous tumors. So how far is such a drug away from us at the moment?

When is the one medicine that everyone wants? Woman connected to chemotherapy (Photo: shutterstock)

Chemotherapy (Photo: ShutterStock)

Once a week, we hear about new research findings that will, in one way or another, help fight cancer, which is the most common cause of mortality in Israel, and probably throughout the Western world. As important as these discoveries are, they usually offer a targeted solution to a specific type of cancer and certain patients, and the great expectation is still the one discovery that will lead to the drug that will cure this disease in general. Are the findings of a new study the ones that will lead us to this drug?

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A team of scientists from the University of Cardiff in England discovered in laboratory tests a method for killing prostate, breast, lung and other types of cancer. The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have been tested in animals and laboratory cells and not yet on human patients, but researchers say they have "huge potential" for fighting cancer. They say their work addresses an early stage of finding a possible solution and is "very exciting."

The method discovered by researchers has been discovered in our immune system, which is our body's natural defense system against infection, but it also attacks cancer cells. Scientists have been looking for "unconventional" ways that have not been uncovered so far in which the immune system attacks natural tumors naturally. What they found was a T cell inside the blood.

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The fighting front of our immune system has two prominent divisions: T cells and B. T cells are the infantry that is in the front and scour the body in search of a threat that needs to be eliminated. In contrast, B cells serve as an intelligence corps that provides infantry information to the enemy, and their role is to produce antibodies - special proteins that identify the target and target other immune cells. When T cells detect invaders, they kill them instead.

The difference in this cell discovered by scientists is that it can attack a wide range of cancers. "There is a chance here to treat every cancer patient, in the past no one believed it could be possible," explained BBC researcher Andrew Sewell. Of cancers across the population. "

How It Works?

T cells have a kind of surface receptors that allow them to "see" at a chemical level. The team at Cardiff discovered a T cell with a receptor that can find and kill a wide variety of cancer cells in the lab, including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical. And all this he does without harming the normal tissues, which is undoubtedly excellent news.

So how does this cell do this? This is still being investigated. This specific T-cell receptor interacts with a molecule called MR1, which is found on the surface of each cell in the human body. Researchers believe that MR1 signals to the immune system the distorted metabolism that occurs in a cancer cell. Research Fellow Gary Dolton said: "We first describe T cell that finds MR1 ​​in cancer cells. This has not been done before. It's the first of its kind."

The team found a receptor that could detect and attack a cancer cell. Imaging of T cells killing cancer cell (Photo: shutterstock)

Immune T cells attack cancer cell (Photo: ShutterStock)

Cancer treatments based on T cells already exist and the development of immunotherapy for cancer - by boosting or weakening the immune response, is one of the most exciting advances in the field.

Here's how such treatment will actually work:

1. Take a blood sample from a cancer patient.

2. The blood sample filters out the T cells.

3. T cells are genetically modified and reprogrammed to create the receptor for cancer.

4. The upgraded cells grow in massive quantities in the laboratory and then returned to the patient.

As mentioned, the study has only been tested on animals and laboratory cells, and additional safety tests are needed before human experiments can begin.

A discovery with tremendous potential

Experts around the world have responded with understated joy to the findings, as the potential is tremendous, but this is a fairly early stage and it is difficult to know if it will actually lead to a drug that is effective for all cancers. Daniel Davis, Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester, summed up the sentiments: "At the moment this is a very basic study and not really a real drug for patients, but it is certainly a very exciting discovery - both to advance our basic knowledge of the immune system and to the possibility of future drug development" .