Killer cells hunt down cancer

RESEARCHERS have discovered how to use the body’s own natural killer cells to ramp up the fight against cancer.

In a major breakthrough, the Monash University team lead by Professor Nicholas Huntington is using these natural killer cells with existing drugs to seek out and destroy cancer cells; a discovery they say can revolutionise cancer treatments.

The team has identified toxic agents that not only destroy tumour cells, but also makes them more visible to these natural killer cells, which are part of the body’s immune system.

Destroying cancer cells is, says Professor Nicholas Huntington, what the immune system is designed to do but tumour cells block it from doing its job. His team has discovered how to remove these barriers.

“Our discovery is sort of a two for one deal: we can now kill the tumour cell directly, but we can also prime a better immune response. It is very exciting,” Professor Huntington said.

“The immune system is designed to look for cells that have had some changes or mutations or malignancy.

“We know cancer is clever. It tricks our immune system into thinking it belongs and so shrewdly evades its line of defence, usually deployed when foreign cells are detected, and so it is left free to grow and multiply.

“Our research looks at ways of combining targeted therapies that helps direct the killing of the cancer cells by making them more visible to the immune system.”

Professor Huntington, head of the Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory at the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University, said the research is now in a preclinical phase and the hope is the research can impact all cancer types, including brain tumours.