Scientists have discovered a new way to safely stimulate immune cells to fight cancer

Last year alone, more than 600,000 people in the United States died of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. The relentless quest to understand this complex disease has shaped medical progress in the development of treatment procedures that are less invasive, yet highly effective. Immunotherapy is growing as a possible solution.

Immunotherapy involves harnessing the power of the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells.

Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) have found a way to modernize a treatment procedure into a revolutionary practice.

In an article published Friday in the magazine Science Advancesthe Virginia Tech team details a new approach that involves activating the body’s immune cells and reprogramming them to attack and destroy cancer cells.

This therapeutic method is frequently implemented with the help of cytokine protein.

Cytokines are small protein molecules that act as intercellular biochemical messengers and are released by the body’s immune cells to coordinate their response.

“Cytokines are powerful and very effective in stimulating immune cells to eliminate cancer cells,” Rong Tong, a chemical engineering major, said in a university statement.

“The problem is that they are so powerful that if they roam freely through the body, they will activate every immune cell they encounter, which can cause an overactive immune response and potentially fatal side effects,” the researcher explains.

The team developed an innovative approach to use cytokine proteins as a potential immunotherapy treatment.

Unlike previous methods, this technique ensures that cytokines that stimulate immune cells effectively localize within tumors for weeks, while preserving the structure and levels of cytokine reactivity.

The fight to kill cancer cells

Current cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, cannot distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells. When a person with cancer is treated with chemotherapy, the treatment attacks all the cells in the body, which can lead to side effects such as hair loss and fatigue.

Stimulating the body’s immune system to attack tumors is a promising alternative for treating cancer.

Administration of cytokines can stimulate immune cells in tumors, but overstimulation of healthy cells can cause serious side effects.

“Scientists established some time ago that cytokines can be used to activate and fight tumors, but they didn’t know how to localize them inside the tumor without exposing the rest of the body to toxicity,” Tong explains.

The research team’s goal was to find a balance between killing cancer cells in the body and sparing healthy cells.

To achieve this goal, the team at Virginia Tech used their expertise to create specialized particles with distinct sizes that help determine the drug’s destination. These microparticles are designed to remain in the tumor environment after being injected into the body.

“Particle size plays an important role in controlled drug delivery, ensuring prolonged drug presence and sustained therapeutic efficacy,” he explains.

To ensure successful drug delivery, the team devised a new strategy that:

• anchors cytokines to these new microparticles, limiting the cytokines’ harmfulness to healthy cells;
• allows cytokines newly anchored in particles to turn on immune systems and recruit immune cells to attack cancer cells;

“Our strategy not only minimizes cytokine-induced damage to healthy cells, but also prolongs the retention of cytokines inside the tumor,” says Tong. According to him, the strategy helps facilitate the recruitment of immune cells for targeted tumor attack.

The next step in the process involves combining the new method of localized cytokine therapy with commercially available and FDA-approved checkpoint-blocking antibodies (immune checkpoint inhibitors), which reactivate cells silenced tumor immune systems so they can fight cancer cells.[dereglementareîndomeniulsănătățiiFDAcarereactiveazăceluleleimunitaretumoralereduselatăcereastfelîncâtacesteasăpoatăluptaîmpotrivacelulelorcanceroase

“When there is a tumor in the body, the body’s immune cells are disabled by the cancer cells,” Tong explains.

FDA-approved checkpoint-blocking antibodies help “take off the brakes” that tumors put on immune cells, while cytokine molecules “step on the accelerator” to set the immune system in motion and make an army of immune cells to fight cancer cells. These two approaches work together to activate immune cells, the researchers explain the new concept.

In their study, combining the control antibodies with the particle-anchored cytokine was found to successfully eliminate many tumors.

Impact on cancer treatment

Team members hope the impact of the new immunotherapy approach will be part of a new direction for cancer treatments that are harmless to healthy cells.

According to the team, this new method of anchoring cytokines to particles could be used in the future to deliver other types of immunostimulatory drugs as well.

Researchers are still searching for safer and more effective cancer treatments, and this motivation is what drives us to develop new technologies in the field, says Tong.

The entire class of drugs used to stimulate the immune system to fight cancer cells has still been largely unsuccessful.

“Our goal is to create new solutions that allow researchers to test these drugs with already existing and approved therapies, providing both increased safety and efficacy,” he notes.