Scientists have created a virus which boosts the immune system and aids it in removing cancer cells, Usually, cancer excels at hiding from the body’s immune system, but this new viral injection can eliminate that advantage. Scientists in Switzerland took proteins from a cancer cell and put it into an artificially created virus. After the virus is injected into the body, the immune system is put on alert for the cancer protein and specifically targets cells with the matching protein.
Because the virus can have any cancer protein injected into it, this type of treatment could possibly treat any variety of cancer. A doctor would only need the protein from the patient’s tumor. So far, mice have been the only patients to receive the viral injections. And with successful studies showing cancer in remission, scientists hope that human trials are next.
Professor Daniel Pinschwer, the lead researcher at the University of Basel says, “We hope that our new findings and technologies will soon be used in cancer treatments and so help to further increase their success rates”. Researchers used lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCMV), a virus that can infect both humans and rodents, as the basis for their man-made virus.
While the virus itself is harmless, the invading foreign object still sets off immune activity in the body. To ensure that the antibody response doesn’t start attacking healthy human cells, researchers used proteins unique to the cancer cells, and not found elsewhere in the body. The potent blend of the viral notification and the cancer proteins prods the immune system to launch a mighty squadron of killer white blood cells: cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. Now armed with the proteins that identify the cancer cells, they find cancer wherever it hides in the body and destroys those cells.
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