Scientists are developing a new vaccine to stimulate innate and specific adaptive response -
Although a variety of strategies based on immunotherapy are used against cancer, they are often hampered by the inability of the immune response to the tumor microenvironment enter immunosuppressive and to mount an effective response to cancer cells. Now, scientists at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences have developed a new vaccine that involves injecting cells that have been modified so that they can stimulate both innate immune response and the more specific adaptive response, which allows the body to keep memories and attacks tumor cells news they form. In the study published in Cancer Research , they found that the vaccine allowed the CD8 + T cell killers - major players in the immune response against cancer - to enter the tumor microenvironment and to target cancer cells.
According to Shin-ichiro Fujii, head of Immunotherapy Laboratory, who led the study, "the cancer cells have different sensitivities to the innate or adaptive response, so it is important to target both for eradicate it. We have developed a special kind of modified cell, called LUAC, we found can. "
LUAC the cells are taken from his own body of the subject, but are foreign cells. The cells are modified by the addition of a cell ligand natural killer T, which allows them to stimulate natural killer T cells with an antigen associated with cancer. The group found that when these cells are activated, in turn, promote the maturation of dendritic cells, which act as coordinators of the innate and adaptive response. The dendritic cells are essential because they allow the activation of immune memory, where the body remembers and responds to a threat even years later.
To find if she worked in real organizations, they conducted experiments on mice with an aggressive form of melanoma that also expresses a model antigen called OVA. Tests in mice have shown, moreover, that aggressive tumors could be shrunken by vaccinating animals with LUAC cells that have been programmed to display the OVA antigen. After treatment, the tumors in the treated animals were smaller and necrotic inside -. A sign that the tumor was attacked by CD8 killer + T-Cells
Fujii continues, "We have been interesting to find a mechanism, and were able to understand that LUAC treatment led to development of blood vessels in tumors that express a pair of major adhesion molecules, ICAM-1 and VCAM-1, which are not normally expressed in tumors. This allowed the killer CD8 + T cells to penetrate into the tumor. "
They also found that in animals who had undergone the treatment, cancer cells injected even a year later, have been eliminated." This indicates, "said Fujii," we have managed to create . immune memory that remembers the tumor and even later attack "
for the future, Fujii said," Our therapy is promising because LUAC typical immunotherapies should be tailor-made with clean patient cells. in our case, we use foreign cells, so they can be manufactured with stable quality. Because we found that our treatment can lead to the maturation of dendritic cells, immunotherapy may move a local treatment to a systemic treatment based on immune memory. "
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