Researchers have made a new discovery in the fight against cancer, which will increase the number of survivors of this malignant disease. According to British news network "Sky News" on Friday, scientists have found a way to understand how patients respond to immunotherapy. This method indicates that patients with "T cells" within tumors are more likely to respond positively to this treatment. T cells are a type of immune cell, and some immunotherapies require patients to receive doses of T cells.
The research team in Manchester hopes that this new discovery will help them target patients who will respond better to immunotherapy, as it has previously been difficult to determine whether the treatment would be successful. The results of the study, conducted by researchers from an institution affiliated with the British National Health Service, were published in the scientific journal (Nature Communications).
Oncologist Sarah Falbione, who led the research, stated that the presence of T cells in tumors indicates that the body's immune system attempted to fight cancer and lost the battle. She described, "If you imagine cancer as a war zone, the villains are the cancer cells, and the good fighters are our immune system." She added, "Cancer cells are quite similar to our body's cells, but they differ because something goes wrong and they have broken parts, which the immune system can recognize."
Falbione continued, "The beauty of T cells is that they are highly specialized in identifying these broken parts, and each individual cell can recognize a specific broken piece. Therefore, when one of these soldiers recognizes a cancer cell, the first thing they do is clone themselves and multiply, creating a small army to recognize the broken parts and kill those cancer cells."
She posed the question, "The inquiry behind this work is that if we see these groups of identical T cells, does that mean that the fighting has already begun?" Falbione noted, "We observed that when there are these small groups of identical T cells, patients have a better chance of responding to immunotherapy, which is truly a wonderful treatment." The study examined 200 cancer patients, the majority of whom were diagnosed with skin cancer.
