Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, United States, have discovered a way to prod the immune system to fight cancer. The method involves delivering an immune system-stimulating protein via a nanoscale container called a vault directly into lung cancer tumors. The vaults are engineered to slowly release a protein – the chemokine CCL21 – into tumors, which then stimulates the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells, potently inhibiting their growth. Leonard Rome, a researcher at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA, said, “Researchers have been working for many years to develop effective immune therapies to treat cancer, with limited success. In lung tumors, the immune system is down-regulated, and what we wanted to do was wake it up, find a way to have the cancer say to the immune system, ‘Hey, I’m a tumor and I’m over here. Come get me.’ ” If the vault delivery method is successful, it would serve as a desperately needed weapon in the fight against lung cancer, which kills 1 million people worldwide every year. Dr. Steven Dubinett, director of the Jonsson Cancer Center’s lung cancer program, said, “It’s crucial that we find new and more effective therapies to fight this deadly disease.” The team plans to test their delivery method in human studies within the next three years. The results of their study were published in the May 3 issue of the journal PLoS One.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-scientists-discover-new-way-202435.aspx