Drugs to boost immune system
Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:13 pm
At long last, cancer researchers have realised that the best cure for cancer is not to use blunderbuss poisons (as in chemotherapy), but to try and boost the body’s natural anti-cancer defences.
After all, simply by living, the body is continuously creating cancer cells…but these are almost instantly destroyed by the immune system.
In the last few years, researchers at Los Angeles’ Cedars- Sinai Cancer Institute have been looking for drugs that might be able boost the body’s natural cancer-zapping functions.
And this month they’ve announced finding two: an mTOR inhibitor [which regulates cellular metabolism], and a CD4 antibody [which helps to initiate an immune response]. When combined they create “a combination therapy to allow immune cells, which are capable of killing tumors, to see tumors that were previously invisible to the immune system,” say the researchers.
As widely reported in the scientific press
“The study's findings, published in the journal Cancer Research, are the first to use these combined agents as an immune stimulator and may have the potential to kill cancerous cells in solid tumors, including some of the most aggressive cancers that form in the lung and pancreas. Investigators hope to bring this science to early-phase clinical trials in coming months.”
Ref: Y. Wang, T. Sparwasser, R. Figlin, H. L. Kim. Foxp3 T cells inhibit antitumor immune memory modulated by mTOR inhibition. Cancer Research, 2014; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-13-2928
After all, simply by living, the body is continuously creating cancer cells…but these are almost instantly destroyed by the immune system.
In the last few years, researchers at Los Angeles’ Cedars- Sinai Cancer Institute have been looking for drugs that might be able boost the body’s natural cancer-zapping functions.
And this month they’ve announced finding two: an mTOR inhibitor [which regulates cellular metabolism], and a CD4 antibody [which helps to initiate an immune response]. When combined they create “a combination therapy to allow immune cells, which are capable of killing tumors, to see tumors that were previously invisible to the immune system,” say the researchers.
As widely reported in the scientific press
“The study's findings, published in the journal Cancer Research, are the first to use these combined agents as an immune stimulator and may have the potential to kill cancerous cells in solid tumors, including some of the most aggressive cancers that form in the lung and pancreas. Investigators hope to bring this science to early-phase clinical trials in coming months.”
Ref: Y. Wang, T. Sparwasser, R. Figlin, H. L. Kim. Foxp3 T cells inhibit antitumor immune memory modulated by mTOR inhibition. Cancer Research, 2014; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-13-2928