Boosting cancer therapy with cross-dressed immune cells

Researchers at EPFL have created artificial molecules that can help the immune system to recognize and attack cancer tumors. The study is published in Nature Methods. Immunotherapies are breakthrough treatments that stimulate the patient’s immune cells to attack the tumor through the recognition of aberrant molecules called tumor antigens. They can be very effective, but currently can only cure a minority of patients with solid tumors. Researchers and physicians are now looking into ways of increasing the precision and strength of the immune attack on the tumor. Dendritic cell vaccines One approach is the “dendritic cell vaccine”. Dendritic cells are specialized immune cells whose role is to capture antigens from foreign bodies and present them to the immune system’s killer T cells, which will then attack and destroy the invaders. For the vaccine, dendritic cells are taken out of the patient, “force-fed” with tumor antigens, and finally re-injected back into ...

• Source: medicalxpress
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• January 25, 2018