The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of sound waves to break down tumors—a technique called histotripsy—in humans for liver treatment.
And histotripsy’s potential benefits go beyond tumor destruction. In the last year, a pair of preclinical studies in rodents suggest that in the clean-up process, the immune system learns how to identify cancer cells as threats. This can enable the body to continue fighting the initial tumor and help activate a natural immune response to the cancer.
Hopefully, but I thought one of the major obstacles of getting a person’s immune system to fight cancer was that it has caused it to then attack healthy cells as well
Is there something unique about this approach that makes this less likely, or is my initial understanding of the problem wrong?
It is a general obstacle. Cancer cells are basically normal cells have mutated in such a way that they a) still survive, b) subdivide rampantly and c) fly under the radar of white blood cells, which normally pick up and deal with said anomalies before they become a problem.
So the trick is about getting white blood cells to detect amd attack anomalies that it previously wouldn’t, while not attacking healthy cells.
Maybe I’m extrapolating incorrectly - I think that’s an obstacle because of all the news articles in the past talking about novel ways to targetedly mark cancer cells as the bad ones, and all the discussion of cancer and autoimmune disease being similar
I’m no expert, but I am familiar with the concept of “tuning” the immune system to recognize cancerous cells via pharmaceuticals. Some of these treatments may cause the immune system to attack healthy tissue. I don’t know if this is still the case.
I think the difference here is that the sound treatment causes the initial disruption to the cells, and then the immune system realizes (on its own) that the cells are a threat. Then, the immune system can start attacking the bad cells.
Since the sound treatment is approved by the FDA, I assume it’s safe, and it’s awesome news
I can’t tell if the article is misunderstanding the science when they say it might help the immune system target the cancer cells in the future, though
Most of the time I see news about it being promising in lab rats, it doesn’t work in humans - which isn’t a failing of science, it’s a failing of the media IMO
Bonus!
This would really be a game changer.
Hopefully, but I thought one of the major obstacles of getting a person’s immune system to fight cancer was that it has caused it to then attack healthy cells as well
Is there something unique about this approach that makes this less likely, or is my initial understanding of the problem wrong?
I have not heard of this obstacle
It is a general obstacle. Cancer cells are basically normal cells have mutated in such a way that they a) still survive, b) subdivide rampantly and c) fly under the radar of white blood cells, which normally pick up and deal with said anomalies before they become a problem.
So the trick is about getting white blood cells to detect amd attack anomalies that it previously wouldn’t, while not attacking healthy cells.
Maybe I’m extrapolating incorrectly - I think that’s an obstacle because of all the news articles in the past talking about novel ways to targetedly mark cancer cells as the bad ones, and all the discussion of cancer and autoimmune disease being similar
I’m no expert, but I am familiar with the concept of “tuning” the immune system to recognize cancerous cells via pharmaceuticals. Some of these treatments may cause the immune system to attack healthy tissue. I don’t know if this is still the case.
I think the difference here is that the sound treatment causes the initial disruption to the cells, and then the immune system realizes (on its own) that the cells are a threat. Then, the immune system can start attacking the bad cells.
Since the sound treatment is approved by the FDA, I assume it’s safe, and it’s awesome news
I can’t tell if the article is misunderstanding the science when they say it might help the immune system target the cancer cells in the future, though
Most of the time I see news about it being promising in lab rats, it doesn’t work in humans - which isn’t a failing of science, it’s a failing of the media IMO