Dendritic Cell Therapy

Cancer is a disease that affects millions of lives across the world every single day. Most people know someone who has been affected by the disease whether personally or through a family member. The National Cancer Institute describes cancer as being, “the name given to a collection of related diseases. In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues.” Normally, the cells in our body grow/divide when needed, and when the body tells the cells to stop growing, they stop growing. However, in the case of cancer, the cells continue to grow without halt and eventually form tumors. So what is being done today to treat the disease that affects so many people? Let’s discuss.

Dendritic cells are a type of cell a part of the immune system. They present antigens on their surface so that the adaptive immune system is able to be triggered. In an article released by Cancer Health, they discussed how dendritic cells could be used to help treat cancer. This method includes a vaccine in which a patient’s dendritic cells are taken out and exposed to cancer antigens in a lab. After exposure, the treated cells are then put back into the body. This would allow the body to treat the cells that have the cancer antigens on it as an invading microbe and kill it-thus slowing down it’s growth. Research is of course still being done on deciding which antigens should be used to treat the dendritic cells. There are self-antigens, viral-antigens, and cancer-specific antigens. Each option has it’s own pros and cons.

Although what I just described seems like a simple solution, there are still a good amount of challenges. For example, in order for the immune system, more specifically the T cells, to be activated and kill the antigen presenting cells, there must be a sufficient number of T cells do begin with. Patients who have undergone chemotherapy can make this a difficult task. The chemotherapy may damage immune cells such as the T cells and render them not as effective. In addition, as a person ages, their immune system is not as strong as it could be and may not mount as large of an attack with T cells as someone else immune system would. Cancer cells also have different defense mechanisms. They sometimes have the ability to physically enable T cells from being able to enter, and some tumors completely compromise the immune system’s response. As you can see, there are so many factors that go into fighting cancer. The use of Dendritic cells however, is a very interesting idea on how to cure cancer. I believe it shows promise, and I am excited to see where the research is in the new future.