British scientists could treat or even cure cancer using a groundbreaking technique that finds and attacks the “Achilles’ heel” of tumours, they say.
Research by University College London harnesses the body’s immune system to wipe out each cancer cell in a “potentially revolutionary” way. It promises to be effective against fast-mutating types of the disease, such as lung cancer, that have so far evaded most treatments. Scientists are hopeful that it will work on all cancers.
Researchers involved in the latest breakthrough warned that the work was in its early stages and trials were needed before it could be used to treat patients. Charles Swanton, from the UCL Cancer Institute, said: “I will be disappointed if we haven’t treated a patient [in a trial] within two years.”
About 160,000 people die from cancer each year in the UK, accounting for almost a third of all deaths. Half are from lung, bowel, breast and prostate cancer.
The research, published in the journal Science, describes a method for creating individualised cancer treatments by finding a key change common to all cells in a person’s tumour and mobilising the immune system to fight it.
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Peter Johnson, from Cancer Research UK, said that the work was very exciting. “[It is about] understanding at a fundamental molecular level what it is that the immune system can see in tumours, leading to effective treatments. We have big optimism about what it will deliver.” In a video introducing the study, Cancer Research UK, which helped to fund the work, described how the technique encouraged immune cells to attack mutations common to every tumour cell.
“They could form a fierce cancer- fighting force with the potential to target every cancer cell in the body . . . if their promise holds true it could prove a revolutionary way to treat or even cure cancer,” the video said.
In healthy people, the immune system attacks and destroys cancer cells. When a tumour forms, it represents a failure of the body’s abilities to defeat the cancer naturally.
Researchers around the world have been looking for ways to help the immune system in its fight but one of the difficulties has been that any one cancer continuously mutates. As it does so, it outpaces the immune system’s abilities to locate it. Equally, even if scientists are able to train the T-cells of the immune system to find it and destroy it at one point, the chances are that some cells will have already mutated sufficiently to be impervious.
The researchers said they had been able to identify the earliest mutations in two lung cancer biopsies as well as the antigens that they produce on the cell’s surface. Because these antigens represent mutations common to all later cells, it gives the scientists a fixed target.
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At the same time, they have found T-cells in the tumour that already attack those antigens but which are not present in sufficient quantity to make a difference. In theory these could be cultivated to kill all the cells. “The tumour has already sown the seeds of the tumour’s own destruction,” said Professor Swanton, a co-author of the paper.
His colleague Sergio Quezada said that the goal was either to grow the T-cells in large enough quantities in the laboratory before putting them back into the patient, or to encourage the patient’s body to make them using a vaccine. “We can work to boost numbers, to get more of those cells, increase the number within the army, and then we’ll destroy the tumour,” he said. Under the treatment, patients would have a biopsy, which would then be genetically analysed to identify the tumour cells to target.
One advantage of the technique is that, in theory, it works best in cancers that mutate rapidly, such as lung cancer. Until now, these have been harder to treat because of their high mutation rate. The research will now be extended to see if it can work in all tumours.
The scientists conceded that the treatment would be costly. Since each cancer is unique, interventions would need to be tailored to individual patients using biopsies of their tumours.
“This is not going to be cheap,” Professor Swanton said. “But cancer care is already incredibly expensive. And what if you balance it against getting a patient back into the workplace in their mid-40s? I would hope we can do this in a very cost-effective way.”
