Team:SMMU-China/Description
Cancer, an incurable disease
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally. According to the data of World Health Organization, cancer is responsible for an estimated 9.6 million deaths in 2018, which made it a major health nowadays.
Since last century, various treatments are built to deal with cancer such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However, limitations and side-effects are bothering us all the time. Only a few types of tumors are susceptible to radiotherapy[1]. And chemotherapy could cause fatigue, hair loss, infection, vomiting, anemia and many other side-effects, which could lead to a great compromise in life quality[2]. What’s worse, cancer cells could progress again when gaining resistance after several years’ treatment. In conclusion, cancer is still an incurable disease today. As medical students, we are eager in finding new ways dealing with this problem.
Immuno-therapy: a new light in cancer treatment
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to two cancer immunotherapy researchers, for their work on uncovering ways to activate the immune system to attack cancer. This is a new breakthrough in developing new cancer treatments, motivating us to do many surveys about cancer immunotherapy.
Up to now, multifarious treatment types are being developed, including administration of the cytokine IL-2, dendritic cell-based cancer vaccines, the blockade of the checkpoint modulators CTLA-4 and PD-1 and adoptive cell transfer (ACT), among which many have shown promising anti-tumor effects[3]. Anti-PD1 antibodies have been approved to treat a dozen of tumors including advanced melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma by FDA[4]. In addition, hundreds of clinical trials about cytotherapy, represented by CAR-T (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Immunotherapy), have been performed globally.
Later we interviewed Professor Wu Yanfeng from National Key Laboratory of Medical Immunology & Institute of Immunology, Second Military Medical University. She is one of the responsible persons for the phase III clinical trial of dendritic cell-based cancer vaccines. “Immunotherapies can significantly prolong the survival span of advanced cancer patient”, professor Wu said, “but it is difficult to totally cure cancer in the late stage.”
From immuno-therapy to immune-surveillance
We have known that complete elimination of cancer from patients, especially patients with advanced cancer, is extremely difficult. The first goal of the present cancer treatment is not killing tumor cells, but extending patients’ life expectance and improving their life quality.
So the question now is how to survive and live well, even with cancer. Constant surveillance is probably a good solution. If we could be aware of the change of tumor-markers frequently, we are able to know our health condition and adjust the treatment perscriptions. But doing tests with blood or tumor biopsy samples frequently is unrealistic, considering its economic and mental burden on patients. So inspired by cytotherapy and synthetic biology, we want to design an immune-therapy and -surveillance system which can kill the cancer cell, and at the same time detect and show the real-time concentration of tumor-markers.
References
1. Schaue, D. and W.H. McBride, Opportunities and challenges of radiotherapy for treating cancer. Nat Rev Clin Oncol, 2015. 12(9): p. 527-40.2. DeVita, V.T., Jr. and E. Chu, A history of cancer chemotherapy. Cancer Res, 2008. 68(21): p. 8643-53.
3. Whiteside, T.L., et al., Emerging Opportunities and Challenges in Cancer Immunotherapy. Clin Cancer Res, 2016. 22(8): p. 1845-55.
4. Magiera-Mularz, K., et al., Bioactive Macrocyclic Inhibitors of the PD-1/PD-L1 Immune Checkpoint. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, 2017. 56(44): p. 13732-13735.