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Boosting Immune System May Help Fight Pediatric AML

Hopkins pediatric oncology director Robert Arceci, M.D., Ph.D., will lead efforts to find a way to keep the body's cancer-fighting immune cells awake and responsive to tumor cells in pediatric patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML).

Scientists have long known that it is possible to activate immune cells to recognize molecules found on tumor cells. Specialized immune system cells called T-cells identify and track down cancer cells with the help of molecules called receptors on their own cell surface and molecules on the surface of so-called antigen presenting cells (APCs).

If these molecules are missing, there is a possibility that the tumor cell will escape recognition by the immune system.

A widely-studied APC cell surface molecule, called B7, wakes up the T cell when bound to its receptors. B7 is missing in some tumor cells.

Researchers believe that making tumors exhibit the B7 molecule may cause T-cells to recognize the tumor and mount an immune response.

Dr. Arceci and research colleagues have used this model to treat AML in mice. The B7 gene was inserted into irradiated AML cells and then injected into the mice.

The B7 molecule was found to be present on the irradiated cells, and the cells were recognized and attacked by the immune system in healthy and early-stage leukemic mice.

Furthermore, the newly "primed" immune system was able to fend off attack from untreated AML cells.

It is hoped that clinical trials in pediatric patients with AML will be developed using such approaches alone and in combination with hormone-like proteins, called cytokines, that stimulate the production and activity of immune cells.

Dr. Arceci presented an update on this research at the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology annual meeting in Baltimore, Md., on Saturday.

[Contact: Vanessa Wasta]

01-May-2001

 

 

 

 

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