Doctors may have come up with a new way to help people struggling with cervical cancer. Some people naturally produce a stronger type of cancer-fighting cell than others and these cells, called granulocytes, these people generate may be able to be injected into people suffering from cervical cancer. The findings were published in the magazine New Scientist stated that some people have cells called granulocytes that were more effective at killing cervical cancer cells in a test tube than others.
The finding that granulocytes could be effective in fighting cervical cancer surprised some scientists, who previously thought that granulocytes played a limited role in fighting cancer. The body's immune system not only fights off infections, but also plays a role in destroying cancer cells. Granulocytes were thought to have a limited rule in killing cancers. The type of immune cell used in the Doctor Cui's research normally wards off bacterial infections. The research team took cells from 100 people and placed them in test tubes with cervical cancer cells and other cell types from the immune system.
Factors such as the time of year and other stresses on the patient affected how well the super cells were at destroying cervical cancer cells. The superior cells for killing off tumors were placed in a test tube while normal granulocytes were placed in another. The super cells killed off 97 percent of the cancer cells in their tube in 48 hours, while in the same two day period the normal cells in the other test tube only managed to kill off two percent of the cervical cancer cells.
Doctor Zheng Cui hopes that this will lead to new cancer treatments in the hopes that granulocytes taken from people with the improved ability to destroy cervical cancer cells. Such injections are not without risk. People with weakened immune systems are already given injections of granulocytes from healthy donors, but the cells undergo a process which ensures that the patient will only receive granulocytes. The problem is that the injected cells may recognize the new body as an invader and start attacking its systems.
Doctor John Gribben, a UK based immunologist warned that further tests are needed on all types of cancer, not just cervical cancer to see if the test tube results can be repeated. It is unlikely that granulocyte injections will see use in humans for treatment of cervical cancer or any other type of cancer in the near future, especially if the problem of "graft-versus-host" disease cannot be overcome.
