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the research, conducted at brigham and women’s hospital and published in the journal science translational medicine , uses a cell therapy approach to eliminate tumours and induce long-term immunity by training the body’s immune system to better identify cancerous cells and prevent them from returning. early testing on advanced mice models with glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, have yielded promising results.
“our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines,” said khalid shah , corresponding author of the study and faculty at harvard medical school and harvard stem cell institute. “using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumour cells and stimulates the immune system to both destroy primary tumours and prevent cancer.”
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“our goal is to take an innovative but translatable approach so that we can develop a therapeutic, cancer-killing vaccine that ultimately will have a lasting impact in medicine,” said shah, who is also director of the center for stem cell and translational immunotherapy.
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dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.ca