Engineering the Immune System to Kill Cancer
Another good technology demonstration for cancer immunotherapy from ScienceDaily: "Human white blood cells, engineered to recognize other malignant immune cells, could provide a novel therapy for patients with highly lethal B cell cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) ... By administering repeated doses of T cells designed to express an artificial receptor which recognizes human B cells, the researchers were able to eradicate cancer in 44 percent of mice bearing human ALL tumors. ... The immune system has evolved to police the body for infections and diseased cells, but it has a difficult time recognizing malignant cells since they largely appear normal to the immune system. The idea is that we can take a patient's own T cells, re-educate them by inserting a gene into them that will enable them to produce a receptor to recognize B cell cancers, and then return them to the patient where they should be able to attack and kill the tumor cells." Highly efficient, cheap and widespread cures for cancer are only a couple of decades away; the breadth and pace of present research is very encouraging.
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070918090753.htm