Soon doctors will have to adjust the treatment of cancer tumors
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Scholars from Switzerland developed an ultramodern technique, implying the use of artificial receptors as enhancers of the immune response to the development of a cancerous tumor.
Experts are constantly working on improving the possibilities of cancer treatment. After all, oncology is considered one of the main problems in world medicine. So, relatively recently physicians began to use immunotherapy more actively, for stimulation of own forces of an organism in struggle against a tumor.
The development of immunotherapy outstrips all predictions. However, it must be admitted that the drugs that stimulate immunity are not effective in every case. It was on this issue that scientists from the Federal Polytechnic College of Lausanne pondered. Researchers managed to think over the creation of dendritic vaccines: now they can be "adjusted" to any tumor directly inside the patient's body.
Dendritic antigen-presenting cellular structural elements are an important link of immunity. They have the ability to "photograph" pathological structures and report them to immune defenders - T-killers.
For the manufacture of a dendritic cancer vaccine, physicians need to separate dendritic structures from the patient's blood sample and "familiarize" them with cancerous foreign substances - antigens - from the patient's blood sample. What does it give? The cancer tumor as a result will not be able to ignore the patient's immune system.
The efficacy of dendritic vaccines is encouraging. However, treatment has a number of conventions. The downside is that the dendritic structures have to be combined with the antigens of the tumor, grown "in vitro." Since each cancer process is unique, the vaccine created may in some cases be ineffective. It would be better if an opportunity appeared to apply antigens directly to the tumor of a particular patient.
The specialists, headed by Professor Michel de Palma, practically solved this question. They created artificial receptors that "photograph" the foreign antigenic substances of a particular cancer process. At the moment, the mechanism looks like this: dendritic structures are isolated from the blood, combined with extracellular vesicular receptors and reintroduced into the patient's body. Providing blood, the receptors detect cancerous enzosomes and report them to the T-killers.
It turns out that the "familiarity" of dendritic structures and antigens is no longer in vitro, but directly in the diseased organism. Experts argue that this immunotherapy technology will really help to overcome most of the varieties of solid cancer - in particular, breast cancer.
Thus, the new technique will significantly increase the therapeutic potential of antitumor vaccines. "We use the term" crossdressing ": dendritic structures transmit the image of antigens to immune cells. This is an unexpected and effective method of programming immunity, which does not require heavy and conditioned molecular bonds, "Dr. De Palma explained.
Details of the scientific work are presented by the journal Nature Methods.
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