Maybe one of the biggest breakthroughs in today`s medicine just happened completely by accident!
A new type of immune cell that kills most cancers has been discovered by accident by British scientists, in a finding which could herald a major breakthrough in treatment.
Researchers at Cardiff University were analysing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell. That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells.
In laboratory studies, immune cells equipped with the new receptor were shown to kill lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer. This newly discovered type of killer immune cell has raised the prospect of a “universal” cancer therapy, scientists say.
Researchers at Cardiff University suggest the new T-cell offers hope of a “one-size-fits-all” cancer therapy. T-cell therapies for cancer — where immune cells are removed, modified and returned to the patient’s blood to seek and destroy cancer cells — are the latest paradigm in cancer treatments.
Therapies which engineer immune cells to fight specific types of cancer already exist, but they are currently only useful for some forms of leukaemia, and do not work for solid tumours, which account for most cancers.
Those treatments – known as CAR-T and TCR-T therapies – involve taking immune cells from a patient which are then altered so they can lock onto molecules which sit on the surface of cancer cells. The cells are then grown in huge numbers and injected back into the patient’s bloodstream.
T-Cell on the other hand, promises a universal solution for multiple cancers!
Asked if it meant that someone in Wales was walking around completely immune to cancer, Prof Sewell of the Cardiff University said: “Possibly. This immune cell could be quite rare, or it could be that lots of people have this receptor but for some reason it is not activated. We just don’t know yet.”
Sources: Telegraph, The Independent
