Modding T-Cells With Tiny Pills to Better Fight Cancer
Darrell Irvine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have found an interesting way to upgrade the naturally occurring cells that fight cancer, the T-cells. The T-cells belong to a group of white blood cells focused on cell-mediated immunity. When cancerous cells are inside the body, certain T-cells swarm over and destroy the cancerous cells; however, various tumors tend to emit an unknown mix of chemicals that weaken T-cells if they get too close, thus preventing the T-cells from destroying the cancerous area.
Irvine’s team found they could strengthen these T-cells’ fight against cancerous cells by attaching 100 nanoparticle capsules to a single T-cell without impairing the cell’s function, and fill the capsule with drugs, essentially creating a nanopill that strengthens the T-cell.
After attaching the nanocapsules to the T-cells, they filled the capsules with interleukins, which are molecules naturally produced by the immune system to help the T-cells’s endurance, then injected the modded T-cells into mice with bone and lung cancer and found that the modded T-cells fought the tumors much longer than the modded T-cells with empty nanocapsules. They also found that the mice injected with the nanocapsules filled with interleukins were improving in health over a month after treatment, whereas the mice injected with the empty nanocapsules died within thirty days.
Not only is Irvine’s method of beefing up T-cells safer than bathing the entire body in interleukins, but modding T-cells is thought to be a much cheaper method of treatment.
(via New Scientist)
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