Recently, groundbreaking medical research has discovered a way to reprogram immune cells to fight cancer. Delivery of cancer drugs continues to be a major problem in combating cancer. Most current cancer treatments cause unintended harm to parts of the body not affected with cancer. Even localized and targeted chemotherapy and radiation affects healthy tissue that surrounds tumors. Delivery of cancer drugs is broken and scientists around the world are researching new delivery methods. Nature has provided our bodies with a natural system of combating disease. Our immune system is able to respond to cuts, wounds, and foreign body intruders directly at the source. Modifying immune cells to deliver cancer treatment drugs would utilize the body’s built-in delivery system to carry treatments directly to cancerous tissue without harming healthy tissue nearby. Scientists have developed nano particles made of lipids, or fats. These nano particles are bound to immune cells in the blood stream and combat the spread of cancer through transmission in the bloodstream. Clinical trials in animals have proven very promising. Animals who were treated with the nano particles had smaller primary tumors, there were fewer cancer cells in circulation, and a lower tumor burden on the body’s other organs. Hacking our immune cells to combat cancer is the cutting edge of developing medical technology and a promising development in the battle against cancer.
You can fight cancer by finding the immune cells. #HealthStatus
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Key Points:
- 1Cancer drug delivery is problematic because chemotherapy also harms the rest of one’s body.
- 2Biomedical engineer Elizabeth Wayne has created nanoparticle treatments that will serve as an alternative solution to fight cancer.
- 3The treatment will bind to immune cells in the body and stimulate them to target cancer cells more specifically without affecting healthy cells.
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