A new cancer therapy developed by Dr Mark Lowdell, UCL Medical School, has been successfully trialled on a patient. The therapy involves a patented process to activate Natural Killer cells (NK) which occur naturally and attack tumours and virally infected cells. While some tumours are easily killed by NK cells, many are resistant to NK killing. The hypothesis for the trial is that NK cells have two controls – one to prime the cell and the other to trigger it to kill tumour cells.
Laboratory experiments showed that these TaNK cells target a variety of haematological cancers as well as breast cancer and ovarian cancer cells. Initially it is hoped that this may increase the duration of remission periods in cancer patients but the long-term goal is to clear residual tumour cells after chemotherapy.
The main benefit, compared with more traditional chemical-based treatments, is that there are far fewer side-effects. The research is funded by Leukaemia Research, and the trial’s principal investigator is Dr Panos Kottaridis of the Royal Free Hospital.
