Immunotherapy

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center are reporting an exciting advance in the field of immunotherapy, demonstrating that engineered bone marrow cells can slow the growth of prostate and pancreatic cancers in mice.

One trick cancer cells use to evade an attack by the body's immune system is to shield themselves behind a particular type of healthy cell, but scientists at the University of Southampton have now found a new way to intervene in this process.

Ideally fighting cancer would be as simple as a vaccine, and scientists are taking steps towards that. Now, researchers have developed a way to make vaccine molecules bigger, so they don’t disperse in the blood stream before reaching their target.

The results are in from a human clinical trial using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system to treat cancer. The study involved editing the immune cells of three cancer patients, and the treated cells persisted and didn’t trigger dangerous side effects.

As promising as immunotherapy is against cancer, these therapies aren’t entirely without risk. But now scientists have developed an emergency brake drug that can switch off the treatment if it begins to spiral out of control.

The best way to fight off cancer might be to strengthen the body’s immune system to help identify and kill tumors. This is known as immunotherapy. Now researchers have developed artificial nanoparticles that should be cheaper and easier to produce.

Breakthrough research from an international team of scientists has uncovered a new type of immune cell with the ability to target and kill most kinds of cancer cells, raising hopes for a universal cancer treatment.

Australian researchers have affirmed an unusual, almost paradoxical, observation that cancer patients with high body mass index tend to display greater survival rates than patients with average healthy weights.

Cancer has a knack for deceiving the immune system, giving itself time to grow and spread. Now, researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have identified one way it does so, and found a method to counter it in mouse tests.

One of the most promising types of cancer treatment involves boosting the immune system’s response to the presence of cancer, and now two new mouse studies out of Yale University are reporting breakthroughs in this area.

A new study is suggesting a simple breath analysis can accurately predict whether lung cancer patients will positively respond to immunotherapy treatments.

The first oral immunotherapy agent to treat peanut allergy is set to be approved, but questions still remain over how effective and long-lasting it is.