Japan Team Develops Way to Efficiently Activate Anticancer Immunity

Osaka, Nov. 2 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese research team has announced the development of a vaccine ingredient capable of effectively activating anticancer immune cells, even with a small amount of cancer antigen.

If the technology is successfully put into practical use, it might expand the range of cancer patients who can be treated with immunotherapies, a type of cancer treatment that uses a person's own immune system but is effective only for 20 to 30 pct of patients.

The research group at Osaka Metropolitan University published the research outcome in the electronic edition of The Journal of Controlled Release.

The team has been studying a method to activate the immune system in which nanometric lipid-based liposomes are used to deliver cancer antigens to dendritic cells, which function as the control center of the immune system.

It created a liposome incorporating a type of lipid that works to activate immune cells and is easily caught by dendritic cells. Using the liposome, only 10 pct of the amount of cancer antigen required previously was enough to disrupt cancer growth in mice transplanted with cancer cells, according to the team.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]