What is cellular immunotherapy?

Cell immunotherapy is actually a relatively advanced treatment method. The body contains many cells, including lymphocytes and T cells. These cells can effectively cause the spread of tumor cells. If there are enough such cells, they can also directly eliminate tumor cells. This is the method of cell immunotherapy, and it is also the concept of this treatment method. There are also different types of cellular immunity, such as active immunotherapy, adoptive immunotherapy, LAK cell immunotherapy, etc. This treatment concept is gradually gaining attention and has good effects on some diseases.

Cellular immunotherapy is a method of killing lymphocytes in the body, including natural killer cells, killer T cells, etc., which can fight against the production of tumor cells. According to experimental observations, one tumor cell requires hundreds of lymphocytes to fight it. There are about 1 billion tumor cells in a tumor mass of one cubic centimeter. Therefore, if there are a large number of lymphocytes, tumor cells can be effectively eliminated and the generation of tumor cells can be fought. This is the basic concept of cell immunotherapy.

Classification

Active immunotherapy

We collect peripheral blood from patients, separate factors that can activate the patient's own anti-tumor cells, and then culture, modify, and proliferate them in vitro before returning them to the patient's body. This can quickly stimulate and enhance the body's own anti-cancer ability. DC cell therapy falls into this category.

Adoptive Immunotherapy

The anti-cancer cells naturally existing in the patient's body are separated, activated in vitro, and then multiplied and directly injected into the patient's body to fight the tumor. This is equivalent to cultivating a powerful anti-cancer army for the patient. Cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells fall into this treatment category. In clinical treatment, we will adjust the specific treatment plan according to the patient's condition. For example, the DC-CIK combined treatment plan is a treatment plan with good efficacy that we have found through multiple clinical practice comparisons. Copyright information: This article comes from the Oncology Department of Xinqiao Hospital.

LAK cell immunotherapy

LAK cells are lymphokine-activated killer cells. Peripheral blood lymphocytes are activated in vitro with the lymphokine interleukin-2 (IL-2) for 3 to 5 days to expand into killer cells with broad-spectrum anti-tumor effects. Experiments have confirmed that transferring LAK to tumor-bearing mice can not only cause the original tumor to regress, but also eliminate established metastatic tumors. LAK has a broad-spectrum anti-tumor effect. The combination of LAK and IL-2 is more effective than IL-2 alone, because LAK activated by IL-2 still needs IL-2 to maintain its killing activity after being injected into the human body.

Advantages

Among various tumor immunotherapy methods, cell immunotherapy has attracted much attention due to its following advantages and has become a very active research field in tumor immunotherapy in the past decade:

(1) Immune cells can be processed in vitro to bypass the various mechanisms of tumor immune barriers in vivo, thereby selectively exerting anti-tumor immune responses. For example, freshly isolated tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) often lack anti-tumor effects, but can restore specific anti-tumor effects after being cultured for a period of time under certain conditions in vitro; under in vitro culture conditions, immune cells that are specifically tolerant to tumor antigens can be reversed.

(2) The activation and effector processes of immune cells are often mediated by some cytokines. Currently, genetic engineering can clone a large number of different cytokines, as well as tumor antigens or peptides. This makes it more feasible and convenient to activate and expand a large number of anti-tumor immune cells in vitro.