Cytokines, small proteins released by immune cells to communicate with each other, have for some time been investigated as a potential cancer treatment.
Cytokines, small proteins released by immune cells to communicate with each other, have for some time been investigated as a potential cancer treatment.
However, despite their known potency and potential for use alongside other immunotherapies, cytokines have yet to be successfully developed into an effective cancer therapy.
That is because the proteins are highly toxic to both healthy tissue and tumors alike, making them unsuitable for use in treatments administered to the entire body.
Injecting the cytokine treatment directly into the tumor itself could provide a method of confining its benefits to the tumor and sparing healthy tissue, but previous attempts to do this have resulted in the proteins leaking out of the cancerous tissue and into the body’s circulation within minutes.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: A new technique prevents cell-killing proteins called cytokines from escaping once they have been injected into a tumor. CREDIT: MIT News
