Because cancer treatments such as drugs and radiation therapy have severe side-effects, patients and doctors have long been hoping of alternative ways to treat the disease. Researchers may now have come one step closer. Scientists recently used gene therapy to cure mice of cancerous tumours. The cancer cells were destroyed by the animals’ own immune system. In the study, conducted by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the U.S., specialised immune cells were activated to destroy tumours without apparent damage to normal cells.
While it is still unclear whether this method can be used to treat human cancer patients, researchers were quite pleased with their findings. It was one of the first studies that focused on how to treat already developed cancer in animals rather than how to prevent in from developing.
A naturally occurring chemical called Interleukin-4 played a key role in the study. It stimulates specialised cells in the immune system, called T-cells, which hunt out and destroy the cancer cells. In people with cancer, the T-cells are not normally activated. The researchers used tumor cells from a mouse and genetically engineered them to secrete large amounts of Interleukin-4
The researchers use … to activate immune cells.
Select one:
a. radiation
b. tumor cell
c. chemical
d. drugs