US drug regulators dropped a bombshell in November 2023 when they announced an investigation into one of the most celebrated cancer treatments to emerge in decades. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was looking at whether a strategy that involves engineering a person’s immune cells to kill cancer was leading to new … Read more
Part of a brain organoid made using human stem cells (purple).Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library Researchers have hailed organoids — 3D clusters of cells that mimic aspects of human organs — as a potential way to test drugs and even eliminate some forms of animal experimentation. Now, in two studies published on 24 April in … Read more
In late 2020, COVID-19’s global death toll was rising as cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and holiday gatherings spurred rapid transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the absence of a vaccine. Scientists and public-health officials were desperate for new ways to track the virus, which often moved faster than contact tracers could follow it. Tong Zhang, … Read more
Vaccines are usually used to prevent infectious diseases. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is different. Rather than teaching the immune system to recognize pathogens in advance of an infection, these vaccines use identifying proteins produced by cancer cells, known as antigens, to provoke a powerful immune response to existing tumours. A variety of approaches The first … Read more
T cells (pink) attack a cancer cell (yellow) in this scanning electron micrograph image.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood cancers … Read more
Of the many young people whom Cathy Eng has treated for cancer, the person who stood out the most was a young woman with a 65-year-old’s disease. The 16-year-old had flown from China to Texas to receive treatment for a gastrointestinal cancer that typically occurs in older adults. Her parents had sold their house to … Read more
Credit: Stuart Bebb/Wolfson College Archives Anthony (Tony) Epstein, co-discoverer of the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), was the founding father of research into the part that viruses play in the development of human cancers. Today, seven types of viral infection — more than one of which can be prevented by vaccination — are known to cause specific … Read more
T cells (blue; artificially coloured) attack a cancer cell (red).Credit: BSIP Lecaque/Science Photo Library More than 35 years after it was invented, a therapy that uses immune cells extracted from a person’s own tumour is finally hitting the clinic. At least 20 people with advanced melanoma have embarked on treatment with what are called tumour-infiltrating … Read more