Utilizing the body’s natural born killers to take out blood cancers

Natural killer cells sound menacing, but they play a friendly role in keeping us healthy. And they might do much more in stopping cancer.

After years of diligent, groundbreaking research, MD Anderson physician-scientists are putting natural killer cells – NK cells for short – to work in a series of clinical trials for a variety of cancers through the cancer center’s Moon Shots Program™.

“这些白血细胞是侦察兵，我们的免疫系统的哨兵，”说Elizabeth Shpall, M.D.，教授干细胞移植和细胞治疗。

They’re constantly surveying our bodies for invading microbes and abnormal cells – the type that can become cancer if they aren’t already. Equipped with an array of detection techniques, natural killers also are heavily armed to deal with the threats they discover.

“They’re poised to kill. They can kill over and over again,” says凯蒂雷兹瓦尼，医学博士，谁也系的教授。“这就是为什么我们试图利用他们的癌症免疫治疗。”

要做到这一点,Shpall, Rezvani和他们的同事have been systematically identifying and overcoming disadvantages that hinder NK cells as cancer-fighting tools.

高在名单上：没有足够的人 - 他们只占10％〜15％，我们的血细胞 - 他们不坚持，仅持续两到三周。也许最重要的是，病人的癌症已经成熟的时候，它已经演变方式逃避该患者的NK细胞，使来自供体细胞是必需的。

To get donor cells, Shpall and her colleagues have tapped a resource that’s unique for a cancer center, an umbilical-cord blood bank. MD Anderson’s was established as a source of blood stem cells for patients with certain blood cancers. Today, the bank stores 27,000 units of cord blood cells donated by mothers from Houston-area hospitals.

这意味着资源没有必要寻找捐助者愿意去通过安检和细胞采集。另一个优势：

脐带血单位已彻底的分析，所以它的简单选择好比赛与高电位在实验室扩大。

为了增加脐血NK细胞的供应，Shpall的团队采用由研究人员在MD安德森的儿科开创了近十年前需要自己扩展干细胞的患者提供的技术。188bet体育网址该技术使得有可能分离并刺激NK细胞在实验室中，增加它们的数量200至500倍。

These NK cells can be given to patients without fear of dangerous side effects like graft vs. host disease. NK cells have been given to hundreds of patients, and so far there have been no toxicities.

在克服两大障碍 - 需要供体细胞和大量的人 - 团队现在正在研究如何进行遗传修饰的NK细胞，使他们持续时间更长，即使脐血来源的NK细胞提供寿命有所改善。

而该团队正在增加专门的受体识别和摧毁特定目标。

There are five clinical trials underway at MD Anderson to deploy NK cells against Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, several types of leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome and multiple myeloma. Read more about the clinical trials inConquest。