A majority of the types of cancer out there fall in the “treatable but not curable” category. But looks that this bleak scenario is soon going to change as experts have discovered an immune cell that kills off multiple forms of the disease without affecting the healthy cells around the cancer cells.
The new T-cells, a type of white blood cell, were discovered when scientists at Cardiff University were analyzing blood samples for immune cells to fight bugs. They are hopeful that this new tumor-killing cell may be the elusive solution to treating all types of cancer.
It would be a major success over the existing form of cancer treatment
As of now, a treatment called CAR-T therapy is employed wherein the patients' own immune cells are extracted and genetically modified. They are then returned to the sufferer's blood where they hunt and destroy cancer cells. But not only are they inefficient in killing all types of cancers, they also find it difficult to differentiate tumor cells from healthy tissue as their genetic make-up is similar and thus, they end up attacking both.
But the recently discovered killer cell is able to distinguish between the two and is swiftly able to kill off the cancerous cells. In their latest study, researchers found that the killer cell was able to destroy 10 cancers while ignoring healthy tissue in a laboratory dish. It was effective in treating lung, skin%2
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