Natural killer cells are the immune cells that directly destroy infected or cancer cells. A POSTECH research team has developed an integrative cancer therapy using adoptive natural killer cell therapy and chemotherapy.
New treatment for solid cancers has been identified using the formation of natural killer-tumor cell immunological synapse by a research team led by Professor Won Jong Kim of POSTECH's Department of Chemistry. The research findings were published as a front cover for the latest online edition of Advanced Materials, a leading academic journal in the field of material science.
‘Treatments using natural killer cells during chemotherapy have low side effects and are more effective in treating leukemia.’
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To date, three methods including surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy are implemented to treat cancer. While surgery and radiation therapy are helpful in reducing the size of tumors in treating solid cancer, there is a high risk of recurrence due to residual or metastatic cells.Read More..
The residual cells and metastatic cells are treated by administering chemotherapy to patients, but their use is limited due to serious side effects in all parts of the body.
However, there is an immune system in the human body that can distinguish cancer cells from normal cells and selectively induce their death, and using this mechanism in anticancer immunotherapy not only has fewer side effects but also a higher survival rate for patients compared to chemotherapy.
In particular, treatments using natural killer cells during chemotherapy have low side effects and are more effective in treating leukemia. However, unlike leukemia cells where individual cells float in blood, in solid cancers, the extracellular layer surrounding the cancer tissues reduces the penetration rate of the natural killer cells, thus lowering their efficacy. Studies are being conducted to overcome this issue.
The research team hypothesized that the acidity would decrease rapidly near the immunological synapses based on the fact that the natural killer cells form immunological synapses and secrete low acidic granules at the boundary of natural killer-tumor cells in order to induce the death of cancer cells.
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It was also anticipated that cancer drugs could induce the death of cancer cells in the deep parts of the tumor as their size is small enough to penetrate the dense extracellular layer around the tumor tissues. In the treatment of solid cancer, the team fused the adoptive natural killer cell therapy and chemotherapy to overcome the low therapeutic effects and high side effects. They implemented a system that can release anticancer drugs only when natural killer cells recognize the cancer cells and induce their death.
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It also confirmed that the delivery efficiency to cancer tissues increased significantly when anticancer drugs were delivered using ReNK in animal models with solid cancer.
Professor Won Jong Kim, who led the study as a corresponding author, stated, "This study is significant in that it has developed a strategy to enhance the effectiveness of cell therapy using natural killer cells in treating solid cancers."
He added, "This method can be applied to any cell with a simple process, so we expect to apply it to treatments currently on the market or in clinical trials."
Source-Eurekalert