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| Monday, 26 September 2005 11:58 | | BNN: British Nursing News Online · www.bnn-online.co.uk
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A team of scientists from the Mayo Clinic believe they may have found a way of helping the body to stave off cancer by boosting the immune system using a technique developed for health workers who become exposed to HIV.
It has proved possible to remain free of HIV following exposure by using anti-viral treatments to dramatically increase the number of infection-fighting immune cells produced by the body and the Mayo scientists believe the drugs could be similarly effective at warding off cancer.
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) boosts the production of T-cells, which fight invading pathogens, by the thymus organ.
The number of immune cells can be increased by a factor of 1,000 and the treatment even works among the elderly who are known to produce fewer T-cells.
Experiments on mice revealed that using ART to improve immunity against illnesses such as cancer would not be harmful to the patient.
Dr McKean, who worked on the research, said: "One of the potential uses we envision is to use the ART treatment as a way to use tumour components to immunise cancer patients against their own cancer cells.
"If we can use the ART drugs to increase the number of newly produced T cells in cancer patients first, we can potentially improve the likelihood of getting a cancer vaccine to work."
ART may also be used to help patients who do not respond well to vaccines, he added.
A spokeswoman from the international Aids charity AVERT said on the BBC News website: "It does sound like a promising approach if they can get it to work clinically.
"These drugs have been around for a long time and have been proven to be safe and fight HIV."
Professor John Toy of Cancer Research said: "There's a lot of promising early research suggesting that it may be possible to adapt the body's immune defence system to recognise cancer cells and destroy them.
"The real challenge in immunotherapy is to generate T cells able to identify cancer cells and kill them and not be deceived into ignoring them as acceptable versions of normal cells."
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