The new therapy to be tested on 20 people diagnosed with cancerdefine will involve transfusion of white blood cells from cancer-resistant donors into cancer patients, researchers disclosed.
Developed in the late 1990s, the researchers noticed that while all mice succumbed to the cancerous cell injections, one mouse withstood the malignant cell injections. "It didn’t develop tumor and didn’t die," the lead investigator of the study, Dr. Zheng Cui, of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine announced.
Making continuous efforts, the researchers kept testing the oddball mouse by injecting it with higher and higher lethal doses of carcinogens.
"No matter how many times we tried to give the mouse cancer, it didn't develop a tumor, and it didn't die," elated Cui remarked. “The mouse was immune to cancer."
Granulocytes – a special category of white blood cells characterized by the presence of granules in their cytoplasm – were giving the mouse the immunity and protection required to withstand the cancerous invasion, researchers tracked.
The Human Trails
Making sure the therapy mimics the results seen on the mouse on the humans too, the researchers will identify a set of cancer-resistant patients by tracking the fighting capabilities of their white-blood cells in a test tube.
Once selected, the white-blood cells collected from the cancer-resistant patients will be harvested and then transfused into cancer patients.
Basically a blood transfusion, the therapy will be relatively painless and with almost ‘nil side effects’, in contrast to the currently available cancer treatments.
"In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors. Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans," hopeful Cui and his team stated.
I'm confused!
I want to get this straight. It took them 5 years to come up with a blood transfusion? This is the big miracle cure? Taking white blood cells from a cancer
-resistant person and transferring them into another? I am sorry ... but wouldn't that be the first thing to try? Why did it take 5 years to do that ?
Post new comment