Chinese scientists programme stem cells to ‘fight and destroy’ cancer
- Team from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health says technique was successful in treatment of mice
- Technique represents another step forward in field of immune therapy, researchers say
Chinese scientists claim to have made a major step towards a breakthrough in cancer treatment by programming stem cells to “seek and destroy” the disease.
Professor Wang Jinyong and a team from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, say that the technique was successfully used to treat mice with cancer of the thymus, an organ central to the body’s immune system.
According to a paper published last week in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell Research, the team used stem cells to create infant immune cells that would later develop into T cells, which are produced in the thymus and play a central role in the body’s immune response.
After a period of time, the tumours disappeared. And because the new T cells had memory, the mice were immune from this type of cancer for life, the report said.
In a statement on the academy’s website, the team said the method could lead to a breakthrough in cancer treatment.