ATLANTA – A new, groundbreaking immunotherapy cancer treatment strategy will soon be promoted from mice subjects to human subjects.
Oncology researchers at Stanford University, including lead professor Dr. Ronald Levy, have developed a treatment that fights cancer using the body’s own immune system, as recently reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The technique includes “immunoenhancing” injections into cancerous tumors. The treatment eliminated cancer cells in 87 of 90 mice subjects.
Researchers say that unlike other strategies, which sometimes kill off immune cells and replace them with genetically-altered cells to combat cancer cells, this newer treatment keeps the body’s immune system intact.
“It has recently become apparent that the immune system can cure cancer,” Stanford researchers wrote in the abstract of their January report. Remarkably, they added, this new treatment can “cure multiple types of cancer and prevent spontaneous genetically driven cancers.”
The newer treatment, which has the potential to be a cheaper and effective option, is expected be tested on humans in a clinical trial sometime this year. The Stanford team is searching for 15 subjects who have lymphoma for the tests.
