Finally! Scientists have pried the hard bone of cancer treatment.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, killing countless people every yearIn the treatment of cancer, although humans have made a series of breakthroughs, but there are still many hard bonesA paper published today in the leading journal Science offers a whole new combination of therapiesIt could bring new breakthroughs to cancer treatment!hard bones
we know that cancer can be divided into two categories: blood cancer, leukemia, lymphoma are in this category of cancer, and the other is called "solid tumor", that is, the existence of actual tumorsWe usually call lung cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, usually solid tumorsin the treatment of blood cancer, a revolutionary therapy called CAR-T was born in previous yearsThe treatment isolates immune "T" cells from the patient's body and then, by genetically ingy, installs a navigator called a "CAR." This navigator allows immune cells to identify cancer cells and attack themCAR and T of "CAR-T" therapy are the sameCAR-T therapy can also be a life-saving miracle for many other blood cancer patientsCurrently, the FDA has approved two CAR-T therapies, and more CAR-T therapies are expected to be available this yearHowever, the effect of CAR-T therapy has been limited for solid tumorsMany scientists point out that this is because there is a lack of "navigation alg" on solid tumors that can be recognized by immune cellsIf cancer cells cannot be found, they cannot be attacked naturallyAnd if the navigation address is set vaguely, it will cause immune cells to mistakenly attack other normal tissues and organsIn the treatment of cancer, this is a hard bone to chew a unique signal of cancer
in a paper published online today in the journal Science, scientists have found such a "navigation address" that belongs only to cancer cells The address, called CLDN6, is itself a protein expressed on the surface of the cell, allowing the cells to stick together Interestingly, CLDN6 is particularly high in embryonic development, but its content drops sharply as adults The researchers analyzed more than 50 different tissue types of healthy adults and found no CLDN6 interesting, CLDN6 levels are particularly high in solid tumors such as ovarian cancer, lung cancer, and uterine cancer In other words, in adults, if the immune cells can navigate to the position of CLDN6, there is a high probability of attacking the cancer cells behind the address 's navigator for CLDN6 (Photo: Resources 1) researchers did just that They developed a new CAR-T therapy, in which the navigator is aimed at CLDN6 In in vitro experiments, scientists confirmed that the treatment could indeed kill cancer cells with CLDN6 More crucially, it doesn't "go the wrong way" and "string the door" to the cells that express CLDN3, CLDN4, and CLDN9, so it's very specific to the attack on cancer cells and if the CLDN6 "door" on cancer cells is removed by genetic editing, this cell therapy also loses the ability to attack cancer cells The results also suggest that it did attack cancer cells by looking for CLDN6, as designed by the researchers After just 2 weeks of treatment, the tumor (red) in the mice completely subsided (Photo: Source: Supplied) in mouse models with larger ovarian cancer tumors, the CAR-T therapy had a noticeable effect After just 2 weeks of treatment, all mouse tumors completely subsided In contrast, the mice in the control group continued to grow wildly improved anti-cancer effectiveness
researchers did not meet the results Instead, they realized that in the treatment of blood cancer, immune T cells can be exposed to a large number of cancer cells that express the surface of the "door", so it can amplify in large numbers In the treatment of solid tumors, immune T cells do not have much access to the "door", which limits their number, thereby limiting their efficacy to this end, the researchers have developed a "anti-cancer vaccine." In the study, the scientists put the information that could make "door plates" (RNA expressing CLDN6) into a small ball called "lipids" and introduced it into the lymphatic system of mice Sure enough, with the help of this vaccine, immune T cells have amplified a lot This can also be understood as a rapid growth in the immune cell army against cancer mice (dark red) who received both CAR-T therapy and RNA vaccine, both tumor size and survival, significantly improved (Photo: Source: Supplied) the anticancer effect of the therapy improved as the number of immune cells increased If only treated with CAR-T therapy, the effect of slowing tumor growth can only be done in mice with incurable lung cancer Less than 20 days after treatment, half of the mice died of cancer Conversely, if CAR-T therapy and RNA were injected at the same time, all mice survived 25 days after treatment and the tumor volume declined , the paper, published in Science, provides a powerful response to the problem that CAR-T therapy is difficult to treat solid tumors The researchers concluded the paper that this study provides us with a solid foundation to better chew the hard bones of other cancer treatments and bring good news to patients around the world! References: K Reinhard et al., (2019), An RNA vaccine drives expansion and efficacy of claudin-CAR-T cells against solid tumors, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aay5967