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Microbubbles’ loaded with immune-stimulating drugs destroy 60 percent of hard-to-treat cancers, such as lung and breast, in mice. The therapy only targets immune cells that work to fight off tumours and avoids the side effects of treating all cells, such as inflammation. The drug does not have any side effect.
Lung and breast cancers are difficult to treat because they are solid, this prevents them from reacting to immune-stimulating drugs as well as blood tumours such as lymphoma or leukemia. To ensure the treatment only targets tumour-specific immune cells, small spheres were attached to the cells.
Coming into contact with these spheres causes the microbubbles to release the drug they are carrying, leading to a chemical change on the surface of the immune cells, which triggers the microbubbles to break down. It cured 60% of tumours in mice, the microbubbles were given to mice who were genetically engineered to express immune cells that target skin-cancer tumours.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers were able to give the rodents around eight times as much immune-stimulating drug- IL-15, without side effects compared to injecting a drug that targets all of the animals’ immune cells.
A second experiment involved the scientists attaching the microbubbles to human immune cells that were engineered to target an aggressive cancer in the brain-glioblastoma. Patients receiving the vaccine, which contains two drugs proven for their safety, will not require any chemotherapy, with the jab’s side effects expected to be just fever and injection-site soreness.
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