Cancer is the number 1 cause of death for most countries. Many researchers have been working so hard to find the cure. That is the ultimate goal but for medical professionals and even patients just hearing about it even if it's not yet proven excites them. Most cancer treatment has severe side effects that most people decide to not go through with it. When treating the disease, the goal is to stop the growth of the cancer cells and it would be even better if they are removed completely. However, this kind of aggressive treatment always has a harmful effect to the surrounding healthy cells.
According to Medical Daily, a group of scientists at the The Scripps Research Institute made a groundbreaking study that can treat cancerous cells into a healthier cell and most of all changing them into antibodies. They hope that this study could be the answer to everyone's prayer.
This was an accidental discovery when they were working on certain immune cells when they noticed something different. The antibodies had some effects on the marrow cells. The team had been looking for antibodies that activate growth receptors on new bone marrow cells. This means they can inhibit the cells to grow into a new blood cell type. Some antibodies were maturing into cells and because of this they thought that maybe there was a way to change cancerous marrow cells to healthier cells.
Richard A. Lerner, institute professor and the Lita Annenberg Hazen professor of Immunochemistry at TSRI and senior investigator said teamed up with colleagues, including first author Kyungmoo Yea, an assistant professor of cellular and molecular biology at TSRI. They decided to test 20 of the recently discovered receptor-activating antibodies on acute myeloid leukemia cells taken from human patients. One of the antibodies ended up having an incredible impact on the leukemia cells.
Most acute myeloid leukemia cells have the thrombopoietin (TPO) receptor, a receptor the winning antibody selectively and potently activated in marrow cells. When the antibody was applied to healthy marrow cells, the cells matured into blood-platelet-producing cells called Megakaryocytes, but when they applied it to acute myeloid leukemia cells, t the antibody it causes them to mature. These mature cells are called dendritic cells, which are key support cells in the body's immune system.
The team made a huge breakthrough, turning cancer cells into non-cancer cells, but they wanted to push further. They noticed that with longer exposures to the antibodies and other regulated conditions, the dendritic cells matured even more. The end result was a group of cells that closely resembled natural killer (NK) cells. NK cells are can quickly attack potentially dangerous pathogens and tumors even if they don't contain the biomarkers normally identified by other immune cells.
Lerner said in a press release, that the antibody could have turned those leukemia cells into a lot of other cell types, but they were lucky enough to get NK cells.
