Could this New Immune Discovery be the Cure to Cancer?

Cure for Cancer Discovery – New Immune Research Gives Hope!

For decades, there has been extensive research on cancer, to find that one solution, which could save a million lives. Researchers have put in so much time and effort to find a cure for cancer, and they have come across something that was initially thought to aid cancer growth but in reality, helps in curing it. 

For years cancer treatments have focused on one kind of immune attack, but this new revelation suggests that leveraging an overlooked immune response could lead to a long-term cure. The latest research is nothing less than a revolution, which has the capability to turn things around. 

According to two new studies, understanding the patient’s “yin & yang” immunity could be the road to their survival.

Immunotherapy is an emerging treatment for cancer, which is based on altering the patient’s defense system to more effectively fight cancer cells. This method is definitely promising, but its effectiveness is not guaranteed.

Immunotherapy is designed in such a way, that it can restore the ability of our immune system to fight off cancer cells, by removing T cells from the patients, and making them more powerful by supercharging them with, chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), so that they can target the specific cancer cells. This is known as CAR-T Cell Therapy.

Generally, this type of immunotherapy works best against liquid cancer. Nevertheless, more than half of the patients relapse within a year. 

The team of scientists at EPFL was eager to know whether there was something specific about the immune cells of the patients who remained in remission, for a minimum of eight years after treatment. They examined the data of the first 2 clinical trials extensively and discovered an unexpected pattern exclusive to those in long-term remission. 

As researchers were investigating, why some patients enter long-term remissions from this form of treatment, while others relapse, they came across something shocking. Scientists found that most of the successful cases showed indications of a second immune response. 

The reason, why this revelation was so shocking for the scientists is that previously this type of immune response was thought to help the cancer cells grow. 

To verify this, researchers performed a follow-up study, where, scientists compared cancer immunotherapy in mice, using single and double immune responses. And to their surprise, 86% of the mice that received the combined treatment were cured, while none of the mice, that received single-immune response treatment survived more than a few weeks.

And what is even more shocking is that, when the cured mice were given new tumors after 70 days of being cured, they fought off those new tumors as well.

This study could be the cure for cancer, that everyone has been waiting for.

Upon closer inspection, it was found that the modified immune proteins were responsible for somehow boosting the glycolysis metabolic pathway, this gives T-cells an energy boost, which might help them get rid of the exhaustion and continue fighting the cancer cells. 

“Our results show that type 1 and type 2 immunity can be thought of in terms of synergy, like yin and yang,” says Li Tang, co-author of the studies.

This study not only enlightens the synergy between the two types of immune responses but also shows us a new path toward achieving innovative cancer immunotherapies, which could cure cancer from their roots and save a million lives.

Cure for Cancer Discovery – New Immune Research Gives Hope!