Cancer: immunotherapy & tumour evolution

Researchers have been trying to find new ways of helping our body's own immune system attack cancer. Immune cells are generally very good at clearing out unwanted cells in the body, but when it comes to cancer they can run into trouble. Tumours start out as a clump of very similar cells, but as a tumour grows, some parts can change and evolve. This microscopic cancer evolution (also called tumour heterogeneity) makes it very difficult for the immune system to recognise and attack all of the cancer cells.

Cancer Research UK scientists Charles Swanton (the Francis Crick Institute) & Sergio Quezada (University College London) and their teams have found very rare immune cells inside a tumour that recognise early features on the cancer's evolutionary tree. This means that these rare immune cells have the capability to pinpoint and attack both the original, and the evolved cancer cells. These immune cells could potentially be isolated and multiplied in the lab to form an anti-tumour army that can track down every kind of cancer cell in the body.

There is still a lot of research that needs to be done before this can be tested in the clinic, but thanks to Prof. Swanton and Dr. Quezada
we are one step closer to unleashing the immune system's full potential in the fight against cancer.

You can read more about Prof. Swanton and Dr. Quezada's work on the Cancer Research UK blog here: http://goo.gl/JvoBp9

The original research paper is published in Science here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/03/02/science.aaf1490

For more information on anti-cancer immunotherapy drugs, you can watch our video here: https://youtu.be/1Fpvnv85PiQ

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Видео Cancer: immunotherapy & tumour evolution канала Phospho Biomedical Animation