Name: Scientists May Have Found a Way to Treat All Cancers... By Accident | SciShow News
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T04:21:26.000Z
Duration: 7 min 14 s
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People often wonder why there isn't a cure for cancer yet.

And the answer is usually because “cancer” isn't one thing.

It's this big umbrella term for a ton of different conditions

While there are treatments for some types of cancer,

different cancers are, well, different enough

that there's nothing that works for all of them

Researchers from Cardiff University in Wales

may have found a way to treat all cancers,

The researchers weren't searching for cancer therapies.

They were looking for ways to fight bacteria with immune cells called killer T cells.

As the name implies, these cells kill things.

Specifically, things that aren't good for your body.

they don't target bacteria or viruses directly.

Instead, they go around interrogating the body's own cells,

trying to sniff out ones that might be hiding pathogens inside them.

And when they find an infected cell, they kill it.

There are different types that use slightly different proteins,

Often, these receptors are somewhat specific

But the researchers were looking for a kind of T cell

that can detect lots of different bacteria.

So, they pulled a bunch of killer T cells from blood samples

and tested their infection-spotting abilities.

The test the team was using just so happens to employ a kind of cancer cell

And a number of different T cells showed promise

when the scientists set them loose on these infected cancer cells.

not just the ones with bacteria inside them —

Now, it's not that weird for a T cell to kill cancer cells,

because T cells don't just hunt for infections.

They are also in charge of keeping cancers in check.

scientists have started harnessing the power of these cells to fight cancer.

T cells are removed from a person's body,

genetically programmed with a receptor which can spot the person's cancer,

and then injected back in to seek and destroy.

But we can't do this for all cancer patients yet

because we don't have good receptor targets

for every type or even subtype of cancer.

You know, that whole “cancers aren't all the same” bit.

it wasn't super surprising that the researchers had found a T cell

that killed this particular type of cancer.

But, before just discarding or shelving them

to continue the hunt for bacteria-killing T cells,

they decided to see what happened with some other cancer types, too.

Lung cancer, colon cancer, bone cancer, breast cancer, blood cancer, skin cancer...

these T cells killed every kind of cancer the researchers tried.

Not only that, but they left healthy cells alone.

this sparked a new investigation into how these T cells were doing this.

the researchers deleted proteins from the cancer cells one by one

if deleting a protein made the T cells ineffective,

then that protein must be involved in how the cells are spotting cancer.

And that led them to a protein called MR1.

See, it's thought to be an informant of sorts for the immune system.

And that's exactly what these killer T cells seem to be doing.

that allows them to interact with MR1 proteins

but they seem to be the only ones we've found so far

that can spot all sorts of cancers by doing so.

The researchers were even able to take this receptor

and stick it into T cells from actual cancer patients.

So basically, the same idea as CAR-T therapy,

but using this one protein instead of tailoring the T cells to each patient's specific cancer.

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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Treat All Cancers... By Accident | SciShow News

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