Drug gets body cells to "eat and destroy" cancer

Scientists have devised a special type of drug that helps the body to eat and destroy cancer cells.

stimulates the action of white blood cells, called macrophages, that the immune system uses to engulf unwanted invaders.

Tests in mice showed that the therapy was effective against aggressive breast and skin tumors, reports Nature Biomedical Engineering. The team behind the study hopes to start human trials in a few years.

The drug they've designed already has a license which they say should speed up the approval process.

It's a "supramolecule" – a drug made from treatments that target the immune system to fight cancer is a growing field of research that many scientists around the world are studying.

A "phagocytic" immune cell called macrophage

Eating cancer

Macrophages are already good in the fight against bacterial and viral infections because they can recognize and attack these "alien" invaders.

But they are not so effective in attacking cancer because tumors grow from our own cells and have smart mechanisms to protect against immune attacks.

Dr. Ashish Kulkarni and his colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School study in two ways. First, it prevents cancer cells from hiding and sending "do not eat me" signals to macrophages. Second, it prevents the tumor from telling macrophages to become docile.

Supramolecular therapy appeared to prevent cancer from growing and spreading in mice.

The researchers predict that it could be used with other treatments like the Carl Alexander checkpoint, from Cancer Research UK, said: "It is promising to see another new approach. More work is now necessary to show that this approach could be used to treat cancer patients. "

– BBC