There is a new cancer treatment devised by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London that uses implanted disease-fighting immune system cells from strangers to fight tumors. Human trials for immune system transplants are scheduled for this year and, if all goes well, could soon be a choice instead of toxic cancer treatments such as chemotherapy. Researchers are saying that this new tack in oncology could even boost ten-year cancer survival rates from 50% to 75%!
“Do-It-Yourself”
Current treatments involve the reliance on chemicals or radiation outside the body to fight the tumors inside. However, with immune system transplants, the body of the cancer patient fights the tumors on its own – hence why the scientists behind the project are referring to it as a “do-it-yourself” approach to cancer treatment.
Charlie Swanton, one of the Francis Crick researchers involved in the work, explained in an interview with the Telegraph:
“It’s a very exciting time. Using the body’s own immune cells to target the tumor is elegant because tumours evolve so quickly there is no way a pharmaceutical company can keep up with it, but the immune system has been evolving for over four billion years to do just that.”
Swanton is confident that the trials could lead to a whole new toolset that doctors will be able to use to fight cancer. He continued:
“I would go so far as to say that we might reach a point, maybe 20 years from now, where the vast majorities of cancers are rapidly treated diseases or long-term chronic issues that you can manage. And I think the immune system will be essential in doing that.”
The idea is that eventually, “Immune banks” will hold immune cells that can be delivered to hospitals within hours. The system could ‘save millions of lives in the future,’ they say. There are immunotherapy treatments out there already, but this treatment is considered to be the ‘ultimate’ approach to using the immune system. The team at the Francis Crick Institute now hopes to set up the first immune banks to store the ‘Natural Killer’ cells.
