US researchers find a way to track immune cells

How immune cells behave in human body has always been a mystery Recently, researchers from Stanford University and other institutions reported in the online edition of the American academic journal Science Translational Medicine that they spent 10 years to find a way to track immune cells (American researchers found that the way to track immune cells Picture source: Baidu picture) the "immunotherapy" that uses human immune cells to attack cancer cells is currently the focus of international scientific research, but how immune cells act in vivo has always been a mystery US researchers have developed a new method to locate and monitor immune cells in vivo At this stage, immunotherapy still has its limitations Sometimes, the effect of immune cells to find and kill cancer cells is better than that of conventional cancer therapy, sometimes not Doctors often wait months to see if the tumor shrinks before they know if the immune cells are attacking the cancer cells If immunotherapy fails, the cancer cells may have spread or become more difficult to deal with Researchers from Stanford University and other institutions recently reported in the online edition of the American academic journal Science Translational Medicine that they spent 10 years to find a way to track immune cells They genetically engineered immune cells from patients, adding a "reporter gene" that guides the synthesis of a protein that can be detected by positron emission tomography After injecting the genetically modified immune cells into human body, we can know the location and number of immune cells by detecting the related proteins, and analyze whether they are close to the tumor and attack Researchers have successfully tested the technique in patients with glioblastoma They say the new technology could also be used to track immune cells that target other cancers Sanjiv Gambier, a Stanford professor who led the study, said the technology could show how the immune system works in a living human body without taking out any human tissue, which is the result He said that immunocytochemical imaging technology also brought about an unexpected harvest In one patient's test, some of the immune cells reached the tumor area in the patient's brain, but some went to another area of the brain, and positron emission tomography showed that there was a second tumor that had not been found before Researchers say the technology, which can locate immune cells and see if they attack cancer cells, helps doctors evaluate whether immunotherapy works for specific cancer patients and analyze the causes (reporter Ma Dan)