Cure…for Cancer???

Everybody has always dreamed of curing cancer, and maybe we have finally come across that cure. We may be able to even cure ourselves through our own cancerous cells, through T cell and dendritic cell therapy. T cell therapy is when the doctors take the cancerous patient’s T cells from the body and alter them in order to be able to attack the cancerous cells. In dendritic cell therapy, the cancerous cells are turned into a vaccine for the cancer. Doctors remove cancerous cells and multiply them and bring them back into the body, in order to create an immune response to the cancer.

In 2018, clinical trials took place in which 263 out of 1,028 patients tested the use of dendritic cell vaccines. In most cases, DC was used to treat cancers, but in some it was even used to treat autoimmune disorders, including MS. I wish my grandma happened to be born about 50 years later otherwise this could be a feasible treatment for her. Now, especially with MS, she’s a little cranky and doesn’t want to try anything else that could possibly put her in more pain, which makes sense since she’s 85. If my grandma were to get dendritic therapy, there would be high risk chances of her getting secondary infections, which, because of her age and her disease, could end up killing her.

In later studies, it is found that the personalized treatments through T cell therapy might not be as reliable as we hoped. The therapy only works “as long as the transferred cells last.” Because tumors can fight against immune responses, it makes T cell therapy difficult to fight against a tumor, and attack them because the tumor is so strong. Along with not even working that well, T cell therapy also leads to cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity.

DC therapy seems to be much more beneficial than T cell especially including the large cost difference and availability. A vaccine would be able to help the immune system rebuild itself, instead of where the T cell therapy is purely relying on the immune system, that is especially weak in a cancer patient. In a study done with DC therapy on melanoma, it was shown to be not as effective as we hope though, as both patients received a reappearance of the cancerous spot. In one case in Cuba, a lung cancer patients used Dc, where it worked.  It is still a developing a cure, and many obstacles are being thrown our way, where the vaccine works in some people, but doesn’t work for others. Increased study and time should help us come to an overall cure eventually for cancer, which is so desperately needed.