[ExI] Cancer

[John Clark]

The journal Nature Immunology published an article yesterday that I think
could be pretty important in the war on cancer:

CRISPR–Cas9 screening reveals ubiquitous T-cell cancer targeting via the
monomorphic MR1 protein
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-019-0578-8.epdf?referrer_access_token=HDEpkmPOLIXidFQ7vTmyyNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NjOoBZR7tEtwlsa1xeSU1tSn9OqKp9tJ7vTk8p7vCmAU4NZd5dS3BIALSEUtLFcpomMuKDUbEnW8GutXD_HuOev_ekvAEfzAa2kC03oyp2SuhBvB2N5K9feGAqhcKqIKgZC2OWk5VF1AgHIU4VXmKYtA08E37GZ-mC1LVqbRLRew%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.bbc.com>

It's been Known for some time that T-cells can be extracted from a cancer
patient and genetically modified with CRISPR to produce a receptor for the
patient's cancer and therefore label it as malignant so the immune system
can attack it. This has produced some very good results for some cancers
like leukemia but unfortunately the treatment must be personalized for each
patient and is far less effective in dealing with large solid cancers. But in
this new discovery they found a  protein called MR1 that does not change
from person to person and exists on the surface of many different types of
cancers. When they used CRISPR to make T-cells to produce a receptor for
this MR1 protein the results have been encouraging.

So far they've only tried it with mice and with human cells in vitro, but
at least in those limited circumstances it has been shown to kill lung,
skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney, and cervical
cancer cells but seems to have no effect at all on non-cancerous normal
cells. And one size fits all, no personalization is needed. It remains to
be seen if this works as well in clinical trials, sometimes they don't, but
one can hope.

Scientist Finds New Blood Cell That Kills Cancer While Ignoring Healthy
Cells <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esV98_-IIMc>

John K Clark
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