One hundred percent accuracy
Find and neutralize: "laboratory-on-a-chip" will increase the accuracy of cancer immunotherapy to 100%
Yulia Vorobyova, Vesti
Radiation and chemotherapy are still the most common ways to combat cancer pathology. However, more and more researchers are now paying attention to the detailed elaboration of a new strategy. We are talking about cancer immunotherapy.
The advantages of such treatment are, firstly, the absence of a wide range of side effects that manifest themselves during standard therapy, and secondly, the ability to make the treatment targeted and personalized.
Experts are confident that in the near future they will be able to create drugs that will target specific tumors with absolute accuracy.
An important step in this direction was made by a team of scientists from the University of California at Irvine. They presented a technology that allows you to direct immunotherapeutic drugs to specific cancer cells, so as not to damage healthy ones and, accordingly, not to cause side effects. At the same time, the selectivity and accuracy of such therapy turned out to be as high as ever.
It should be recalled that the immune system of the human body has its own resources to fight tumors. In particular, T-cells are responsible for repelling enemy attacks. On their surface there are T-cell receptors that bind to antigens on the surface of foreign or any other cells that are seen as a threat. In particular, they can bind to tumor cells. However, in practice, such a protective system does not always work. The protective cells do not "see" the enemy, since he looks very much like a "friend".
Accordingly, in order for immunotherapy to be effective, specialists must determine which T-cell receptor molecules will be able to recognize a specific type of cancer cell. This is done according to certain antigens. If the enemy is detected, then later the body can neutralize it itself.
A new development by American scientists is designed to speed up this identification process.
The scientific group was headed by Weian Zhao and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1971, the famous biochemist David Baltimore.
Researchers have developed a screening system that identifies certain T-cell receptors that "specialize" in different tumors with absolute accuracy. And it takes only a few days.
The essence of the technique is as follows. First, doctors take the patient's T-cells. Then, in the laboratory, they "equip" the protective cells with a large number of the necessary receptors to improve their ability to bind to the antigens of cancer cells.
The researchers explain that it is extremely difficult to find out which receptors will bind to a certain type of tumor, because there are hundreds of millions of different T-cell molecules. The search for a receptor corresponding to a specific type of cancer cells can take up to a year, and the patient may not have this time. In addition, such work requires considerable financial investments.
Therefore, scientists have developed a so-called laboratory-on-a-chip. This is a kind of scientific laboratory in miniature.
It is a platform that provides the supply of cancer and T cells into microscopic oil-water droplets. Earlier, scientists found out that the corresponding pairs of "T-cell receptor – antigen" quickly bind to each other and form "duets" inside such microscopic containers with liquids.
At the same time, the accuracy of identification of the "receptor-antigen" pair reaches 100%, and the whole process takes only a few days.
Further, the T-cells needed for targeted treatment will serve as the basis for immunotherapy treatment.
At the next stage of research, the team plans to search for the optimal form of treatment, including methods of delivering immune cells to the patient's body.
Recall that doctors are already able to create anti-cancer vaccines that direct the defenses of the body's immune system to fight tumor cells. Now, thanks to the new development, the accuracy of the "sight" will be maximum.
At the same time, it is important that such T-cell therapy will be personalized, because specialists will use the patient's "native" immune cells.
"This technology is particularly interesting because it eliminates the main problems that arise in the treatment of cancer. Screening of microfluidic droplets significantly reduces the cost of creating new anti–cancer immunotherapeutic drugs that cause fewer systemic side effects than standard chemotherapeutic drugs and significantly accelerate the duration of treatment," notes Weian Zhao.
According to the assurances of his team, the new "laboratory-on-a-chip" that performs screening will be available to pharmaceutical companies that develop drugs in a few months.
Doctors have no doubt that this powerful revolutionary tool will not only help save the lives of millions of people, but will also be useful for studying oncological diseases themselves, biological and molecular processes occurring in the patient's body, as well as for researching the potential of immunotherapy.
Article by Segaliny et al. Functional TCR T cell screening using single-cell droplet microfluidics with a description of the development is published in the specialized scientific journal Lab on a Chip.
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