A new strategy has been developed that promises to make immunotherapy effective against a greater number of tumors: it consists in taking some of the diseased cells, damaging them in a test tube with chemotherapy drugs and replacing them in the tumor, so that they can emit alarm signals that recall the 'guardians' of the immune system appropriately 'awakened' by immunotherapy drugs. The protocol, tested on mice, has shown that it can eradicate the disease in 40% of cases, preventing relapses. The findings are published in the journal Science Signaling by experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In their experiments, researchers led by Michael Yaffe tried to treat cancer cells in test tubes with various chemotherapy drugs used in different doses: they found that cells damaged in DNA but still alive are more effective than dead ones in recalling the attention of the immune system.
The 'dying' cells, in fact, emit alarm signals that induce the T lymphocytes to destroy every tumor cell present in the vicinity. The treatment, experimented on mice with melanoma and breast cancer, has been shown to completely eliminate the disease in 40% of cases. What's more, when new cancer cells were injected into mice months apart, the T lymphocytes were able to recognize and destroy them before they could form new tumors.
Yaffe hopes to be able to test this approach in patients who do not respond to traditional immunotherapy, but new studies will be needed first to determine which drugs to use and at what doses for different forms of cancer.
