British Scientists
May Have Found Cure For Cancer. By Accident.
January 22nd, 2020
By Hank Berrien
DailyWire.com
British scientists may have discovered a cure for cancer
— by accident.
As The Telegraph
reports, “Researchers at Cardiff University were analyzing blood from a bank in
Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an
entirely new type of T-cell. That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen
receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers,
while ignoring healthy cells.”
What makes this new discovery so exciting is that prior
therapies, referred to as CAR-T and TCR-T therapies, which use immune cells to
attach to HLA molecules on cancer cells’ surface, fight cancer but are
incapable of fighting solid tumors. As The Telegraph points out, HLA molecules
vary in people, but the new therapy attaches to a molecule called MR1, which
does not vary in humans, which gives it the chance of fighting most cancers and
additionally means people could share the treatment, allowing banks of the
cells to be stored and thus be offered quickly to people suffering from the
disease.
Immune cells from the new treatment have killed lung,
skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer
cells. The study stated:
Human
leukocyte antigen (HLA)-independent, T cell-mediated targeting of cancer cells
would allow immune destruction of malignancies in all individuals. Here, we use
genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 screening to establish that a T cell receptor
recognized and killed most human cancer types via the monomorphic MHC class-I
related protein, MR1, while remaining inert to noncancerous cells … These
finding offer opportunities for HLA-independent, pan-cancer, pan-population
immunotherapies.
The study concluded, “In summary, we describe a TCR that
exhibits pan-cancer recognition via the variant MR1 molecule, and, by equipping
patients with melanoma T cells that lacked detectable cancer reactivity with
the MC.7 G5 TCR, we rendered the T-cells capable of killing autologous
melanoma.”
Professor Andrew Sewell, lead author on the study,
enthused to the Telegraph, “This was a serendipitous finding, nobody knew this
cell existed. Our finding raises the prospect of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ cancer
treatment, a single type of T-cell that could be capable of destroying many
different types of cancers across the population. Previously nobody believed
this could be possible.”
Astonishingly, T-cells of skin cancer patients altered by
the treatment were apparently capable of killing the patient’s cancer cells and
other patients’ cancer cells as well. The team of researchers posited that
trials on terminally ill patients could conceivably start in November.
Professor Oliver Ottmann, Cardiff University’s Head of
Haematology, stated: “This new type of T-cell therapy has enormous potential to
overcome current limitations of CAR-T, which has been struggling to identify
suitable and safe targets for more than a few cancer types.”
Professor Awen Gallimore of Cardiff University’s division
of infection and immunity and cancer immunology lead for the Wales Research
Centre, added, “If this transformative new finding holds up, it will lay the
foundation for a ‘universal’ T-cell medicine, mitigating against the tremendous
costs associated with the identification, generation and manufacture of
personalized T-cells. This is truly exciting and potentially a great step
forward for the accessibility of cancer immunotherapy.”
The research was published here.
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