My Cure for Cancer

by

Sarah Zambrano

T-Cells attacking Cancer Cells, photo from BBC article "Immune discovery 'may treat all cancer'"

     To find a cure for cancer, I would most likely talk to different research hospitals, medical research universities, and other medical and scientific professionals who are focused on finding a cure for cancer. More specifically, I am interested in how we can harness our own body's immune system to find a cure. I think we can still use the other methods we are currently using, but there has got to be a way to help our body's destroy these invasive cancer cells.

     At Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, researchers believe they may have found a cure for all cancers. They looked into ways that our immune system already fights off diseases and tumors. What they found was a T-cell in our blood and its receptor could find a kill many different cancer cells including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney, and cervical cancer cells! And unlike other types of cancer treatments that can kill both good and bad cells and tissues, using this T-cell receptor method normal/healthy cells and tissues were left untouched, while the cancer cells were attacked and destroyed. This is because the T-cell receptors can "see" other cells at a chemical level. 

     "Exactly how it does this is still being explored. This particular T-cell receptor interacts with a molecule called MR1, which is on the surface of every cell in the human body. It is thought MR1 is flagging the distorted metabolism going on inside a cancerous cell to the immune system. We are the first to describe a T-cell that finds MR1 in cancer cells - that hasn't been done before, this is the first of its kind," research fellow Garry Dolton told the BBC in their article from January 20th of this year, titled "Immune discovery 'may treat all cancer'".

Two T-cells (red) attacking a cancer cell (white).

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51182451

https://www.labiotech.eu/car-t/cancer-immunotherapy-tcr-car-t/